


The Consequence of Our Youth

by madeofheart (nerdofthenile)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Anger, Angst, Blood, Bruises, Disfigurement, Family, Family Feels, Found Family, Game Patch, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Insanity, Not related family, OOC, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Sburb, Punishment, Sadstuck, So Not Canon It Hurts, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal actions, Torture, Violence, city life, not canon, so OOC it hurts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:33:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 25
Words: 29,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdofthenile/pseuds/madeofheart
Summary: It’s a story of 5 people and the fact that the term “evil” can be such a blurred line.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *rises from the grave* Hey guys!
> 
> So I have been writing this since late last year, on and off. It's been a fic I've only worked on when I was upset or angry or something like that just to vent my frustrations or tears or whatever. It's pretty bad and super out of character. I am ultra hesitant to post it at all. It's not done. But I love the concept, and I wanted to share. Please don't hate me, lol. 
> 
>  
> 
> As usual, constructive criticism would be loved and appreciated. 
> 
> Enjoy and thank you for reading! :)

It’s a story of 5 people and the fact that the term “evil” can be such a blurred line.   
  
~~~~~   
  
**7 days after winning**   
  
You find yourself in an almost empty room with one thought:   
  
The game would not be kind to you.   
  
Not all that surprising, really. You didn't do “kind”. You were Vriska Serket, pirate extraordinaire, scourge of the seas and a proud descendant of the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. “Kind” was hardly a word in your vocabulary.   
  
So “kind” wasn't extended to you. Touché, on the game’s part. Touché.   
  
You sit up in a worn out mattress, the walls a faded vanilla and your body an aching mess. You didn't need to look to know you were… different. You could feel it just sitting there, breathing in stale air. Your lungs felt weird. Your chest bones felt out of place. You could feel your pulse beat at an irregular rate, and your head felt light, the weight of your horns… not there. You glance at your hands.   
  
Peach colored. Clawless.   
  
Human.   
  
Unsur-fucking-prising, game. Unsur-fucking-prising.   
  
You wretch yourself off of the mattress only to realize it is literally on the floor. The room is bare besides you, the mattress, a light overhead, a small cabinet, a window on one wall, and a door that you're guessing is the exit.   
  
And a lone mirror in the corner. You are at just an angle that you can't see what it's reflecting.   
  
A puzzle then, you grin. Is the game up to its antics? Well, then, antics you are up to playing with. You slowly stand, taking your sweet time to get used to the stupid human anatomy in your legs (your knees felt weirdly not there and your ankles all too present). Once you find your balance, in record time of course, you make your way over to the mirror. You already have a plan: the lightbulb, of course. You can use the mirror’s reflection to shine the light…somewhere. Maybe out the window? Yes, perfect! You brace your hands on the frame of the mirror and   
  
You look   
  
At your   
  
Reflection.   
  
_ Lord English is literally right there, so close, victory in plain sight. And you're going to see it til the end. The sky is fractured above you and a horde of the undead back you up as you hoist the treasure- the weapon- under your arm. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ This is going to be thrilling. _ _   
_ _   
_ You stagger back, releasing the mirror and opting to clutch at your head instead.   
  
_ You open the box and let the weapon out. It's huge, white and square and flashing, and you feel four very different things from even looking at it. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ You feel the presence of perseverance, patience, forgiveness, and determination heavy in the air as the weapon does its magic. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Dust and smoke rocket towards Lord English, and his rage and surprise is delicious. _ __   
  
You fall to the floor.   
  
There is white.   
  
You screw your eyes shut.   
  
**“A special part of Sburb is the patch it has for enemies you face in the game.”** **  
**   
Special   
  
Patch   
  
No. No no no.   
  
You can't give in.   
  
Hell no, you won't give in.   
  
You slowly force your eyes to open. And you look once more into the mirror at your face.   
  
Your hideous, grotesque face.   
  
You crawl over to the mirror as if in a trance. Sitting back on your haunches, you ghost a hand over the raised flesh under one eye, ugly, marred, raised just a bit off the skin. A part of your lip is shredded off to reveal your teeth just a bit. Your other eye, your eightfold one, that pesky beautiful eye that had caused you just as much trouble as it had caused you success, was half closed from the scar tissue above it, and it was a lazy eye. There was one long strip of reddened skin along the side of your face, giving you a contour that no actual makeup could fix.   
  
You looked hideous.   
  
You looked like a monster.   
  
You swallow a first sob, but you can’t stop the second that comes. It’s ugly like you sobbing, the choking kind that gets stuck in your throat before forcing it’s way out. You hate it. This isn’t you at all, but you can’t help it.   
  
You look the part now.   
  
You act like it too.   
  
A monster.   
  
You’re a monster.   
  
You quickly make yourself wipe away your tears, because no matter how distressed you get, your pride will overcome everything.  ~~Like the monster you are~~. You reach out and trace your face in the mirror. You want to take the reflection and rip it off. But you can’t.   
  
You’re a monster.   
  
You should do something. You should get up and show the game what for. Show them all that no matter what, Vriska Serket will get back up. She can take anything that’s thrown at her and get up 8 times stronger.   
  
But the memories of your victory and disappearance into nothing after Lord English’s (hopefully) final defeat at the hands of the weapon you had unleashed are weighing you down, sticking you to the floor in front of the mirror, unable to find the strength to move. And there is a voice in the back of your head-- the game, the voice is the game-- telling you why would it matter? Whatever this patch is has left you alone, human in a new world, and who knows where your friends have gone now. This is your punishment. For your misdeeds.   
  
This is your punishment for being an enemy to so many fellow players.   
  
And it is this voice that makes you lose the motivation to even try getting up.   
  
You decide that curling up in the room’s silence is an easier option in the end.


	2. Chapter 2

**16 days after winning**   
  
You find Jack Noir completely by accident.   
  
After taking around two weeks to recover from the shock of your appearance, you decided to make yourself at home in the shabby little room that would now serve as a home for you (the game was feeding you this information, you could feel it’s code tingling in the back of your mind).   
  
But you could only hide for so long. Stupid humans and their stupidly small stomachs and stupidly short toleration for no food. Stupid game and stupid food in the cabinet that didn’t last long.   
  
But for the first time in your life, you are scared to go outside, and you almost make yourself reel from the thought. You, scared? Come on. But this stupid, stupid fucking game was screwing your mind over, and you couldn’t help the fear.   
  
A personal hell, maybe, feeling things you know that under normal circumstances, you would never feel.   
  
You find a sweatshirt in the cabinet and force yourself outside. It takes five flights and one or two pauses to take a breath and one pause to make sure the hood of the jacket was completely covering your face before you stepped out into   
  
The goddamn most busy street that has ever been streeted.   
  
People were everywhere-- it was large and bustling, clearly the middle of the city, and clearly in the middle of rush hour. Never in your life had you seen so much life in one place. Even having Equius and his lusus and his robots as neighbors was a little much, FLARPing in the past was more about the end goal than the social stats of it all. This? This was a lot. You narrowly avoid getting soaked by the splash made by a passing taxi. A man walking next to you turns and yells at the driver to watch where he’s going.   
  
There’s no one you know around. So you stare at everything with the awe of a wriggler. And you walk. Because you have nothing left to live for, and you can decide to dock your pride for  a minute and look stupid whenever you want to.   
  
You stick to the inner edge of the sidewalk for a while, keeping in shadows and out of the general flow of traffic. You glance up and around at different intervals, hiding your face. You don’t want anyone to know the truth to see.   
  
You are passing the stoop of a coffee shop when you see him. He’s sitting there on the steps like a douche. A man dressed all in black, a black fedora blocking his face from view. He’s got a pipe in his mouth and he’s leaning his forearms on his knees.   
  
You know it’s Jack the moment he looks in your direction.   
  
You both stare at each other a minute. You can only see one eye, much like he can only see the outline of your face. But you can feel that stupid connection. That stupid fucking buzzing of the game, it’s coding spinning through your fate, your precious irons in the fire.   
  
Wiring you to this jerk.   
  
Since Jack isn’t making a move, you decide to take matters into your own hands. Because when is that not the case. “Jack Noir?” You address him.   
  
He responds with a stiff nod.   
  
You cross your arms. “A nod? That’s it?”   
  
He stares you down.   
  
He stare him down too.   
  
“You’re one of them kids,” he finally sniffs at you, “the horn ones.”   
  
“That’s me.”   
  
Silence.   
  
Jack hummed. “The fuckin’ code in your head too?”   
  
You are taken back, not just by the fact that the one other person you’ve found has the same game code banging around in his skull, but by you even being taken back. Since when were you ever taken back? Never. But you guess you shouldn’t be surprised.   
  
Whichever Vriska Serket you were now wasn’t the one you thought you knew.   
  
You only give him a nod. “A buzz,” you suggest, “it’s just a stupid buzz in the back of you mind.”   
  
Jack nods. “Just like that.”   
  
More silence.   
  
“Where are you living?” You ask him.   
  
He laughs and gestures to the alleyway next to the coffee shop. “Right here, kid.”   
  
“Here?”   
  
“Mm.”   
  
“That’s not a building, idiot, you don’t actually live there.”   
  
Jack shrugged and adjusted his hat. “Does it look like I’m lying to you?”   
  
Now that he mentioned it, no, it doesn’t. He looked ragged as a human, worn out, much older than you and somehow more thin. His clothes look a bit dirty and the bottom of one pant leg is torn a bit at the seam. There’s a scrap of a sheet clinging to the alleyway entrance, acting as a door.   
  
“You killed my friends,” you say, “you killed them once.”   
  
Jack didn’t reply.   
  
“I could kill you here now and no one would know or care.”   
  
The game’s code buzzed sharply in your head.   
  
Jack still didn’t respond.   
  
You put out your hand. “I have a place. You can stay.”   
  
He looks up and you finally get a look at his face. He's completely normal for a human, sharp angles and stubble on his chin, but a large scar marred one eye. His lips were pursed together in a straight line.   
  
He takes your hand.


	3. Chapter 3

30 days after winning   
  
You find him in a dumpster. You should be more surprised.   
  
Jack, somehow knowing more about the new world than you, told you that if either of you wanted to survive much longer, you’d have to both work. Jack already found himself a job at the very coffee shop he had camped out next to for almost a month, but you— yours was a different story. Jack hadn’t been all that appalled at your face (“Meh, I’ve seen worse, on much worse a bitch,” something you honestly doubt because you are the reigning and proud monarch of the bitch kingdom), but that didn’t mean others weren’t. Every shop, restaurant, every outlet you applied to turned you away after looking at your face. Even jobs that required you to work behind closed doors or behind the scenes quickly dismissed you.   
  
And for the first time in what feels like forever,   
  
You are taking hard hits at your confidence.   
  
And the game fucking snickers. You feel the patch in the back of your head, it’s code more like taunts made to torture you. You want to rip it out. You want to kill it. You want to make it pay.   
  
You want to stop thinking is this what it feels like to have someone else in your head?   
  
You hate Jack, you really do, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He walks with you up and down the streets to find some kind of job. He screams at the people who turn you away at first glance and glares down the people who stare on the sidewalks. It’s almost… invigorating. If only the others could see you know, waltzing around with Jack Noir as a bodyguard.   
  
But this was Jack Noir in a new skin suit and the others weren’t here. So you just walk with a purpose and try to do what you have to, which is find a godforsaken job that will be able to put food in your stomach and maybe even help Jack out a little, even though he’s a massive douche who killed your friends in a past timeline and who ultimately doomed you all—   
  
You were the one to bring him there though, in all honesty, and—   
  
Why did you—   
  
You should’ve—   
  
You got way off topic.   


You find a job on your own after you left Jack to scream at a cashier who wouldn’t even give you a chance to apply for a job. You walk out of the restaurant and start to turn on the block, hoping to get back to the apartment/room thing before Jack because you don’t feel like having a conversation about the stupidity of the job market in this place, when you spot a man struggling to get a trash bag out of a dumpster. He’s really trying, you’ll give that to him. But he’s scrawny and pasty and you are pretty sure his arms are going to snap if he tries anymore.  
  
You sigh.  
  
You make your way over and wordlessly yank the bag out of the trash bin, surprising the man. You quickly tie it off and hand it to him.  
  
“Whoa, uh… thanks,” he stutters.  
  
“Don’t mention it,” you answer, and are about to make a quick abscond, but then you hear, “you do that often?”  
  
“No?” You reply.  
  
“That’s a heavy bag.”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Is that light to you?”  
  
“Kinda?”  
  
“I’d kinda appreciate the help,” the man says, “I’ve got a few more barrels to deal with….”  
  
You turn to the three other trash bins and internally groan. See, this is why you have always been mean. It doesn’t get you roped into messes like this.  
  
“Fine,” you grunt, and get to work helping the twig.   


You’ve unloaded the other bins and gotten them into the truck before the man offers you a spot as his partner. “I can be operator, you can be the guns, yeah?”  
  
You stare. “Does it pay?”  
  
“Pretty swell, yeah. Feeds my wife and I.”  
  
“If it feeds your wife, it’ll probably feed me, then.”  
  
“She’s not that hungry.”  
  
“Oh, trust me, a girl will eat until the demon is satisfied.”  
  
“… wait, you’re a girl?”  
  
And so you became a trash collector.  
  
It was the last job you would ever think to have, it was dirty work and grimy and more times then not you went back to the room smelling like garbage. But it paid well enough and it kept you busy, and you could wear your sweatshirt under the vest jacket you had to wear. The man who worked with you ended up leaving about two days in because his wife had a baby and he never was able to come back. You don’t know if you’re jealous or relieved to have that section of the city to yourself now.  
  
It was thanks to this job that you found him in a dumpster.  
  
You were unloading trash down 13th street and you were just about finished. Just one more unload and you’d be done for the day. It was a dumpster next to a supermarket, which had a lot of extra plastics they wasted and threw out shiny new. You liked to snag a few here and there for yourself, since yeah you could afford food now, but you had to eat off of something and eat with actual forks like actual… um, human beings, you guess. Jack too. You loathe to admit it, but he’s been helping keep food in the room, and he’s been strangely grateful about his staying with you. Anyway, that’s what had you walking around the back of the truck to the dumpster to see what you could find. Two trash bags next to the dumpster didn’t have anything except smelly compost and actual trash, so you hoisted yourself up to see if you could find something useful in the actual dump.   


You need to get used to being surprised.  
  
You can’t stifle a gasp when you see it— no, see him. He has to ball up to even fit inside the damn thing, he’s so tall and gangly. His hands are clasped around opposite shoulders,hugging himself tight. His skin is a stale mocha color, a different shade than the peach you had found yourself with. His face is gaunt and his pants and sweatshirt don’t fit right, like a small child who’s wearing his father’s dress shirt. His hair is a curly black mess.  
  
You wouldn’t have made the connection, had you not seen the long, reddened scars that shred his face.  
  
The code ignited like a lightening bolt inside your head, spinning and again making a wire that connects you to the boy in the dumpster. It’s jittery this time, a lot less direct than it had been with Jack. Spastic. Restless. You feel binary hit the sides of your skull as you stare at him. You of course know his name.  
  
His name is Gamzee.   



	4. Chapter 4

Jack chokes on the water bottle he was drinking when you come home not with plastic plates, but a boy’s arm slung over your shoulder, and not in a romantic way. “What the fuck, kid?” He hisses as you carefully drop Gamzee onto the mattress you had woken up on. He’s bony and cold to the touch, something that, were you still trolls, would be healthy for a purpleblood, but you don’t think that’s good for humans. “It’s Gamzee,” you say matter of factly. You don’t need to tell him further. You see his unscarred eye widen behind the rim of his hat.   
  
“The murder kid,” he muses, “the one with horns who-“   
  
“Technically, we all killed someone,” you snap at him, “he just… he did more damage than the rest of us. And he was… it was unexpected.”   
  
“Where’d you find him?”   
  
“In a dumpster.”   
  
“He connected with you?”   
  
You raise a hand to one side of your head. “Yeah,” you whisper. “He did.”   
  
You fall into silence.   
  
You jump when you feel a hand on your shoulder, warm and bare. You swivel your head to see Jack now right behind you, face grim and his hand on your shoulder. You feel a warmth in your chest you haven’t really felt before.   
  
“I know,” his voice is always scratchy but this is the first time the scratch has seemed soft, “whatever fucking code this… this thing put in us is annoying as all hell and worse.” He pauses. “If it’s hard on a man like me, no telling what it must be doing to a kid like you.”   
  
You digest his words before responding. “It’s not bad,” you say, “it’s just….”   
  
“Makes you feel guilty?”   
  
“About a lot of things. And connecting with someone who did just as many… bad things….” Your eyes sweep over Gamzee’s form, “… I don’t know what this is.”   
  
Jack lets his hand fall from your shoulder. “I don’t either, kid,” his voice sounds defeated, “I really don’t.”

You both stay there, sitting next to each other on the same side of the mattress while you wait for Gamzee to wake up.  
  
You touch your chest and wonder what that warm feeling was.   


~

When Gamzee wakes up, he wakes up slowly. The first thing you pick out is that his eyes are a startling green, a huge standout from the dark shades of his body.  
  
He stared at you with nothing but fear.  
  
You are a monster, now you look the part  
  
He tries to scream and starts to fling out his arms, but Jack catches them first, and you don’t take long to smack a hand over his mouth, the last thing you want is your neighbors complaining. “Gamzee,” you try, “Gamzee, stop, it’s me, Vriska, remember me?”  
  
His eyes glue to yours and widen. Slowly, very slowly, his muscles relax and he stops struggling against your hold. Jack lets his arms go at a snails pace, and you take your hand off his mouth even slower. Gamzee stays there, obedient, a slack jawed expression plastered on his face.  
  
“…Gamzee,” you say, “Gamzee, fucking…”  
  
What do you say? You had mind controlled him, had gone into his brain, had used him as a doll and tied him up and thrown him into a fridge for however long. It didn’t excuse what he did, not at all. But did it excuse you?  
  
You internally smack yourself. What were you thinking. Of course it excused you. He deserved to rot. But then why did you lug him from the dumpster in the first place?  
  
You’re snapped from you’re reverie by Gamzee throwing his arms around you so hard you almost fall over. Jack is about to catch you but sees it’s just a hug, and backs off.  
  
“Vriska,” Gamzee says, and it takes you a second to be surprised at the lack of “sis” in the name, “I’m sorry, so motherfucking sorry, please, I’m sorry….”  
  
You’re shocked. So shocked. What was happening? You shoot Jack a look, but he is calmly watching you both with no emotion on his face.  
  
“Please,” Gamzee whimpers, “please, sis, motherfucking please… get all up in my head, be a motherfucking puppeteer on me—“  
  
What?   


“—I don’t care, sister, I don’t gotta motherfucking care in the world, _just don’t leave me alone, Vriska, please, motherfucking don’t leave me alone_ ….”  
  
Your breath hitches at the rawness in his voice, and a cold sticky feelings drips into your veins. He’s clutching onto you like a vice and burying his face into your shoulder, hiccuping sobs and muffling his gasps into your sweatshirt. You’re pretty aware you probably don’t smell great but he doesn’t seem to care. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to say.  
  
You just hold Gamzee with Jack by your side in the dingy apartment room the game gave you.   



	5. Chapter 5

**42 days after winning**   
  
“Why ain’t the reigning bitch around here?”   
  
Of course it’s Jack who breaks the topic you’ve been thinking about since the code started running in your head. It’s a Sunday morning, the one morning you and Jack are home. Gamzee is in his usual hugging position as you give him a plastic bowl full of oatmeal. “What do you mean?” You ask him.   
  
“You know who I mean,” Jack sneers, “the hag.”   
  
“Be more specific,” You ask and you smirk a little, because you both know you’re just trying to make him say it.   
  
Gamzee pokes tentatively at the oatmeal with a plastic spoon. You’ve yet to have gotten him to eat normally and neither has Jack.   
  
“The Empress,” Jack finally relents, “The Condesce.”   
  
Gamzee freezes with the spoon raised halfway to his mouth.   
  
You shrug. “I’ve been… wondering. About that.”   
  
“Which means you’ve been looking?”   
  
You glance up at him. He’s smirking too.   
  
You put your hands up in a mock surrender. “You got me,” you tell him. “Fiiiiiiiine. Yes, I’ve been poking around.”   
  
“For what exactly?”   


“For a clue,” you answer, nudging Gamzee’s wrist to make the spoon go into his mouth, “for something. Of all of us, she has to be here. I don’t know about Lord English, I’m pretty sure he’s dead, honestly—“  
  
“I should be dead too, kid. But here I am.”  
  
“— it’s rude to interrupt. Anyway, I know she has to be somewhere here.” You distract Gamzee from your conversation by tapping the rim of his bowl. When he looks down at the sound, you quickly tap your head, where the code pushes most at your skull. “Something is just telling me she is.”  
  
Jack looks from you to Gamzee, knowingly. “I see,” he replies, “and you’ve found?”  
  
“Jack shit,” you say and you can’t help but grin at the play on his name. Jack barks a short laugh that stops as soon as it came out. “Well played,” he gives that to you at least. “Count me in to your search, kid.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Not exactly fond of the hag. Ruined a whole lot of plans back in the day. Be nice to tell her my thoughts face to face.”  
  
Gamzee licks at the spoon a bit to try and get the last of the oatmeal off. You take the spoon from him and use the corner of your sleeve to wipe his lips.  
  
“Why you up and even getting a bother on, sister?” Gamzee asks for the millionth time since you found him.  
  
“Because I can,” is your millionth reply. And for the millionth time, Jack ruffles his hair, a signal that Gamzee can’t continue to moan about how you are wasting your time with him.

~

  
You have a new location to pick up trash. The local penitentiary. It’s a huge building, with sky high walls and chicken wire fencing, and it takes a few trips from each trash collector to get rid of the trash for a week. You’ve been put on duty for it, and while it’s one more thing you have to do, it also gives you a small bonus every time you do it, which is nice. You need it. You and Jack both are working now to support yourselves and Gamzee, who you quickly deemed unable to work, because he started to cry himself into hysterics when you weren’t in his presence. If you hadn’t taken over his mind once, you might have felt less guilty.   
  
As days go on without much change and the game code only burrows itself deeper into your soul, you find that you have let yourself feel more and more guilty about everything. It’s the second day of you doing the afternoon round at the penitentiary that you feel it. You just finished putting the last bag into the truck when it strikes you hard.   
  
A connection.   
  
It sizzles in your head enough for you to blindly clutch at your malformed ears to block out a sound that isn’t there. The code zaps your skull and you gasp. Something is new this time, different from the connection with Jack and the spasm that was Gamzee.  
  
This one had a voice.  
  
Find her.  
  
Find who?  
  
Her.  
  
You could give a guess as to who the game is talking about- you and Jack had just been talking about her.   
  
The Empress. The sea hag.  
  
In the fucking penitentiary.  
  
And you immediately know you have to get her out of there. Somehow. Why, you don’t know. But you know the code won’t stop buzzing until you get her out. But how? You found Jack and Gamzee easy enough. Breaking into a jail? Get a prisoner out? Whole other story.  
  
You make your way back to the trash depot and then back home, wondering how you’ll pull this one off.  
  



	6. Chapter 6

“Well well, what are the chances,” Jack grimaces when you relay the news, “we bring her up once and you find the witch. Figures.” 

You all are sitting around the designated eating circle (you don’t have actual furniture). Gamzee is curled up against the wall with a second hand blanket around his shoulders. Jack is in front of you, and your nearest to the open room. 

“And you’re sure it came from inside the jail,” Jack asks.

“Yeah,” you nod, “I’m positive. And this time, the code like… it… it spoke to me.”

“Spoke to you?”

“Yeah. It said to ‘find her’. So I guess we have to find her.”

Jack ground his teeth. “We got to?”

“I’m guessing, yeah, idiot. We all found each other so I’m guessing HIC has to join the crew, right?”

“Rather throw the bitch overboard.”

You roll your eyes. “Wouldn’t we all,” you say, “but I think you know that we have to get her out, too.”

Jack stared at you before he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jeez, kid,” he says, “we got each other’s tabs, huh?”

“The code?” You ask.

“The damn code,” he confirms, “the damn stupid code.”

You stare at the floor. “How?”  
Jack crosses his arms. “How what?”

“How are we going to get her out?”

“Get her out of the jail?”

“No, the market. Yes, the jail.”

Jack looks at you with an unreadable look. “Window?”

“Walls are really high.”

“Climb over?”

“Cameras, idiot.”

“Disable them, then.”

You throw your hands up. “How? We are three borderline hobos just getting by with two out of three of us employed, and how in the world do you think we can disable a fucking camera system? How do you think we’re supposed to get inside a fucking jail?!”

You hunch over yourself and cup your face in your hands. We can’t, is the answer. You can’t. You won’t be able to get The Empress out, the code will buzz inside your head until your brain bursts open and you die. Is this how people like Sollux felt with the voices of the dying in his head? You hate it. 

You hate how it amplifies the things you’ve kept down for so long. You can’t do this. You’re Vriska Serket, descendant of Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, but you can’t do this. None of you can. And it’s killing you inside, the inability. Since when could you not do something?  
“Since when?”

It takes you a minute to realize that that last sentence had been said aloud and directed at you. You pick up your head to meet Gamzee’s eyes, boring holes through you. “Since when you ever not motherfucking been able to do a thing, sis?”

“What?” You say, dumbly.

“You our spiderbitch,” he tells you, “our motherfucking masterminded sister. You up and get what you want, no matter how you up and get it, right? ‘S how you got all up in a brothers head, stealth like.”

You stare at him.

“You’re motherfucking Vriska Serket,” he whispers, “you ain’t a step down from nothing. You ain’t a bitchin’ whiny ass motherfucker. You be a wicked planner of all motherfucking tricks of trade. You a motherfucking scary sister.” 

Jack can’t stop a laugh.

“You can think of something,” Gamzee says, “I got a motherfucking know on that you can.”

He lapses back into his childlike silence after that.

You stare at him a bit more until you look at Jack, who’s now looking at you quizzically. 

“Ok,” you say, “ok.”


	7. Chapter 7

You take a few days to scout out the penitentiary. You take a mental note of the guards and their shifts, and you relay it all to Gamzee, who despite his shattered and wobbly state of mind has a great memory. You memorize when the gates open and close. You bring Jack along with you on one shift to scope out how big the walls are.    
  
You plan like you’re planning a FLARP campaign. When you hit a wall— a firewall put up by the code, no doubt, to trigger an insecurity you’ve never felt get you down before— you look at Gamzee, who is either looking out the window or sleeping, for motivation. You never would have looked at the former druggie murder clown for motivation before, but somehow, here you are. When you look at him, you’re reminded of a simpler time, of children with horns and big dreams. And that pushes you on with your planning. You plan like you are roleplaying Mindfang, and this would be her biggest heist yet.   
  
A week after the initial decision to break in, you have a plan sketched out and solidified by your roommates.    
  
And this is how the plan is written as:   
  
It’s a Monday night, one of the slower nights at the jail. You have a job at the east side trash disposal, you bring Jack and Gamzee with you, both in the same gear as you. There’s a guard shift change ten minutes after you get there. While you feign motor trouble, Jack will slip in during the change, and Gamzee will stick around close by as back up while you drive the trash truck back. Jack, you hope, should follow the connection he feels inside, grab HIC, and get out of there. You should be there with Gamzee by then to give an escape, the escape being a mad dash to Jacks old haunt: the alleyway next to the coffee shop. Once you feel the coast is cleared, you all go back to the room and assess the damage.    
  
This is how the plan actually goes:   
  
It’s fine, Jack gets in, and everything goes according to plan up til you meet up Gamzee next to the jail. You are running down the sidewalk, dodging people, trying to beat the time crunch, and you round the corner and—   


And Gamzee isn’t there.  
  
This is where you had shown him the day before to go. You had made him stand there and memorize everything around him, you’d even written it down on a newspaper clip of a map of the city, put a big X on the page for him as a visual. But he wasn’t there.   
  
Another new feeling in your gut. This one you’ve felt once or twice in your life. Once facing off Jack. The other in anticipation of fighting Lord English.  
  
It’s fear.  
  
You’re afraid. For the very first time, you’re afraid for someone else.  
  
Why? You owed Gamzee nothing. He was a monster just like you, and a killer just like you. You should be glad you can’t find him. Right?  
  
But that’s just it, wasn’t it. You don’t want to lose another person like you, a former troll, a former killer.  
  
You were afraid of… of what?  
  
You don’t dwell on it too much— for now. Now you needed to find Gamzee, and fast. If Jack somehow got The Empress out earlier than expected….  
  
You search around the block, every restaurant, every shop. You even ask a few people, careful of hiding your face; hi yes, have you seen a tall gangly mess with 3 scars down his face? Yes, that would be my lost roommate, please return him to me.   
  
He’s not anywhere.  
  
And now you’re starting to panic.   
  
You don’t push your limits, you stick around the jail. But you need to find him. And now. You feel a tightness in your throat and oh, you hate this. This feeling of where the fuck is he, but even more so, why the fuck did you care so much, and why did you not have an answer for that?  
  
You look in alleyways, you peek in crevices, even in sewers, you look. You look everywhere. You would never admit to being frantic before, Vriska Serket did not get frantic. But now you would. You’re frantic. Where could he be?  
  
You pause in a shadow of an alleyway to gather yourself. At best, you had maybe ten minutes to get back to the spot to help Jack and hopefully The Condescension. If you were Gamzee, why would you have run? Why would you? You sit and think. Why, why, why…  
  
He’s a former maniac who has control over his mind after not having it for a long time. He would hate, absolutely hate going backwards, feeling cornered again. So maybe something made him feel caught or claustrophobic? A possibility. And if he had experienced something like that, what would he do? Run away, get as far away as possible. But no, he wouldn’t run all that far. He was in a fridge for a long time. New things scare him. He would get as far away as he could while being in familiar territory. So he’s probably somewhere still on the outskirts of the block next to the penitentiary.   
  
You go cold as you realize you’re thinking like a judiciary, an officer.   
  
You’re thinking like Terezi.  
  
You run to retrace your steps, not for times sake, but to get the sticky, consuming thoughts out of your head.   
  
You’re scouring an alleyway you had searched through before when you hear a sniffle. You whip your head to the sound. There. Behind a stack of boxes way in the far back, a small shadow you hadn’t seen the first time around in your frenzy. You dash over and skid to your knees in front of him, cup his face in your hands and force him to look at you.  
  
“Gamzee,” you hiss.  
  
“Karkat?” He asks, staring through you.  
  
Your heart wobbles inside of you.  
  
“No,” you whisper, trying hard to make your voice steady. “No, Gamzee. I’m Vriska.”  
  
His vision comes into focus, slowly but surely. He stops looking past you and starts taking in your deformed face, the sweatshirt that you wear like a second skin. And he says, “I’m sorry.”   


“I know,” you smooth his hair out of his face, “It’s fine.”  
  
“You acting all pale like on me, sister.”  
  
You heft him up, make him stand, and start leading him out and away. “I’m not,” you say, “because we’re human, and pale romance doesn’t exist anymore.”  
  
It shuts him up, and you chalk that up to a reprimand for running away from you.  
  
You are leaving the alley when you see a man and a woman walking down the sidewalk, the man in awkwardly fitting clothes and the woman in a long trench coat. It takes a minute for you to recognize the coat, a minute more to recognize the man.  
  
“Why aren’t we r—“ you don’t make out the full question.  
  
“Just walk,” Jack says, “and don’t look back, kid.”  
  
You steal glances at the woman as you guide Gamzee, an arm hugging him close. She has her eyes forward, her face young with the weight of age, and not once does she look back.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**52 days after winning**   
  
“You remind me of that annoying bass that messed a whole lot up, gil.”   
  
It was the first thing HIC said to you since she came back to the apartment with you. It was the first thing she had said, period. Jack and Gamzee were off buying food, one of the few things you deemed Gamzee okay enough to do— you’d become his caretaker as of late. You were alone with The Empress, something Jack was wary of (“I am sure as hell not cleaning your blood off the walls, that’s disgusting,”) but you insisted you’d be ok.   
  
You pick your head up from where you were sitting, looking through newspaper columns for coupons. You don’t answer her, still letting her first words sink in.   
  
“You look like her,” The queen repeats, “you came from the same hatch patch or somefin?”   
  
“Who?” You ask her.   
  
“You and that gil,” she says, leaning back against the wobbly plastic chair she was sitting in, lovingly stolen by yours truly and patched up using Jack’s stolen supplies and Gamzee’s childlike fascination with fixing things. “The gil with the ring, short hair, shoaling some skin.”   
  
A name pops into your mind. “Aranea?” You say as you go back to searching for coupons.   
  
“Who’s she?”   
  
“She was my dancestor when the game was still a thing,” you say, keeping things as nonchalant as possible. You wanted to keep on your toes with this woman. She wasn’t Jack or Gamzee, both of which you had experience fighting with and more or less had experienced some kind of victory over. She was Her Imperious Condescension, she had ruled over your species for a long time and was the most feared troll in your existence. This didn’t change, even if your home planet was gone and you were all human now and you were sitting in a run down city apartment searching for coupons with her sitting in a piece of stolen furniture.

“When the game was still a thing,” Empress reiterates.  
  
“Yeah,” you shrug, “I don’t think she’s here now. She wasn’t….” What was the word? “…a present antagonist.”  
  
The queen mulled that over. “Present antagonist.”  
  
“Yeah, she wasn’t like we were. Couldn’t top the act, hm.” You smirk at that last part.   
  
The Empress glares at nothing. “She’s a ruiner, that gil. Stepping on territory that wasn’t hers.”  
  
You nod silently. You scan an ads page. Nothing you could use. You flip on.  
  
“Why are we here?”  
  
You think through our next words carefully. “The game,” You make out, “the game put us here. You feel that? In your head?”  
  
“That glubbing buzz?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s the game code. I think only we have it. It’s also why you’re human now.”  
  
HIC scowled at that. You sneak a peek at her. The game gave her a nice body, curvy and full, tall too. Her skin was just a shade tanner than yours, and her hair fell around her in crazy long brown tresses with hazel highlights. Her face was sharp, her posture predatory. Lucky for you, you knew predatory because you had been a predator once. It doesn’t faze you.  
  
“What game?”  
  
“Sgrub, Sburb,” you say, “it’s wha blew up Alternia too, brought the humans to us in the first place.”  
  
She takes that in.   


“And why us in particular?”  
  
“A game patch,” you respond as you finally find a useful coupon and start to rip it out of the newspaper. “A patch that takes all the game villains and does… this, I guess, to them.”  
  
The Empress ignites at that. “Villains?”  
  
You give her a single nod as you force yourself to concentrate on the coupon. You won’t tear it this time. You refuse.   
  
You stare distracted by the sound of the chair grating against the floor. You pick your head up slightly to meet the enraged eyes of the queen.   
  
“This game thinks it can glubbing define me? It thinks it can call me what it wants? I ain’t the villain, never was. ‘S alwaves you kids, alwaves was. I shoaldn’t be here. It’s bullcrab. I want out.”  
  
“If there was an out, would we still be here?”  
  
“You ever heard of ‘if there’s a will there’s a wave’?”  
  
“No, I’ve heard ‘if there’s a will there’s a way’, and it doesn’t look like there’s a way here, so.”  
  
“Then what the fuck are this… this game’s ideas of a… a villain?”  
  
“Slow the good guys down?” You suggest, “be the problem? I don’t know.” You didn’t read that far into the code. Oh, the code. “Maybe the code can tell you.”  
  
“The code.”   


“The buzz we just talked about.”  
  
She steps right in front of you, her shadow overpowering. “I,” she breathes, “wouldn’t talk with that tone to your glubbing empress.”  
  
You don’t look up at her. You don’t bother getting distracted, letting her know how many chills were running through your body or how every leftover troll instinct was telling you to run. You instead say, “You aren’t empress anymore. You are nothing. We all are nothing.”  
  
You expect to be slapped or thrown to the ground. You expect maybe to be chucked out the single window. You expect worse things. But nothing comes. You feel her retreat away from you and you hear her creak back into the chair. You dare another glance at her. She’s staring out the window.  
  
You wonder what happened during her almost 2 month stay in jail.   



	9. Chapter 9

One day, it rains. You watch Gamzee’s face look outside in a state of wonder.    
  
Jack opens his mouth to ask if trolls had rain on their planet, but The Empress answers before he can speak. “Rain wasn’t codmon,” she tells him, “and even if it did rain, it rained in certain places.”   
  
Jack stares at her for a minute before he turns back to watching Gamzee. It’s the first thing she’s said to him.   
  
You haven’t seen rain much either, but you aren’t as mystified. It’s water that comes down in droplets from the sky. Big deal. There’s a memory deep inside you, of you standing in someone lawn ring with something similar falling down all around you, a solid, colder version of rain, white and soft, and you were calling out to someone through a window, remem8er me, remem8er…   
  
But you forget what that type of rain was called.   
  
Gamzee is almost glued to the window at this point, so you make a suggestion. “Wanna go outside?”   


You don’t think you’ve seen anyone shake their head so enthusiastically.  
  
You leave Jack and HIC in the room, exchanging a look with Jack that said he had his big boy pants on and he could handle the witch himself if he had to. Gamzee is almost vibrating with excitement as you lead him out onto the sidewalk. He goes ahead of your immediately and stands in the middle of the sidewalk, hands out to feel the raindrops. No one is around to see you, so you even risk taking the hood of your sweatshirt off. The rain feels… nice, against the marred skin of your face.   
  
“Sis,” Gamzee says over the patter of the rain, “Vris-sis.”   
  
“Hm?” you reply.  
  
“This is…." he laughs. "It's bitchtits.”  
  
“It is,” you nod, “it is bitchtits.”  
  
He smiles against the water drops. “Sis.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You like it?”  
  
“It’s…” you think. “… iiiiiiiits… wet. It’s wet.”  
  
“Motherfucking duh, sister, but whatchya think otherwise?”  
  
You hold your hands out, letting the rain hit your palms. “… it’s calming,” you say.  
  
Gamzee nods and tilts his head up. “It is,” he agrees, “up and is calming.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Rain must be lucky,” Gamzee comments as the rain falls in curtains around you, “lucky to have its family fall around it all up and at the same motherfucking time.”  
  
You stand next to each other in the middle of a storm. You feel that warm feeling again.  
  
You still don’t know what it is.   



	10. Chapter 10

**85 days after winning**   
  
It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened.   
  
But it did.   
  
It was twisted and way over the top for something so trivial compared to what the rest of you had done. Unfair, almost. You felt undercut. Did the game think you hadn’t done that badly? That you didn’t do bad enough to deserve what he got? If you had gone further with the supposed mistakes you made, would you have been in his place?   
  
You feel bitter, angry, but most of all, you feel tired.   
  
It had been twelve hours.   
  
Twelve hours since you had night duty for your rounds. Your strength with the job and loyalty to the trash company hadn’t gone unnoticed, and you were picking up quite a few shifts, including night ones. Jack was still working his coffee shop job and even Her Imperial Condescension, who you’ve all taken to nicknaming Condy, had taken a job as a low paid front desk secretary at a local hotel. But you still wanted to get a little extra cash. Couldn’t hurt. And secretly, though you’d tell no one, ever since the day you first saw rain, you’d been getting Gamzee little trinkets of things he’d never seen— a slinky, a pinwheel— to see that look of wonder on his face. He’d lose a lot of it, but whatever he lost that you found, you’d make into something useful; the spinning tops had proved big enough and hollow enough to be used as mugs for the coffee Jack brought back at a discount. You find it all worth it. Whenever you give Gamzee something, that warm feeling blooms in your chest. You think that the more you feel it, the more of a chance you’ll have to study it and try to give it a name.   
  
So you took a night shift. Twelve hours ago.   


It was eleven hours ago that you were driving down a street you’d never been down before, and you realized you were headed into a part of the city you didn’t know. At all. The section with the apartment was poorer than most, sure. But this. This was seedy. Dirty. Everything reeked of trouble. If you wanted to get robbed or murdered, this part of the city seemed like the place to be. You drove on with a purpose. You get trash, you leave. Nothing above that.   
  
Ten hours ago, you had stopped behind a weird looking bar. Two girls were standing out back smoking, and you planned on doing your job and not engaging. But then you heard one say “the boy.”  
  
And you weren’t expecting the code in your head to buzz louder.  
  
It hadn’t happened in a while. A long while. But you recognized it immediately. Not a direct connection like Condy’s or Gamzee’s, not a realization like Jack’s. This was an undertone. Foreboding. Like not all the pieces were there. You slow your movements of loading the trash into the truck to listen to their words.   
  
“The boss is showcasing him so much”, the girl with the pink eye shadow says to the other, “I don’t get it. It don’t look like he even gets a lotta business, does he?”  
  
“He ain’t been turned out yet,” the other says, the one with blonde streaks. “So he must be doing something.”  
  
“So weird, a boy turns up on the doorstep a few months ago and he suddenly becomes a house favorite.”  
  
“And a house secret.”  
  
“Really?” Questions Pinkie. “He’s a secret?”   


“Yep,” says Blonde, taking another drag. “He’s a special, honey. They pay a lot for him.”  
  
You want to hear more, but they start to walk away, the obnoxious clicks of their high heels drowning out anything else they might be saying. You sigh and swing yourself back into the truck to finish your rounds. The buzzing doesn’t let up.  
  
Eight hours, your lucky number. You turn the truck into the depot after a few more stops and book it back to the sketchy part of town. You don’t bother going back to the room to tell the others where you’ll be. They’ll know you’re fine. You always are. You make your way back on foot to the building where you heard the girls, which brings you to seven hours.   
  
Seven hours ago, you go to the front of the building and read the sign. “The White Whale.” There is a picture of Moby Dick beneath the main logo.  
  
You didn’t like the cold feeling you got the moment you saw the whale.   
  
You go inside. The lobby is clean enough, love-seats here and there and neat pictures hanging from the walls. There’s a man behind the counter. He looks content, scribbling down words into a notebook.  
  
You go up to him. “Hey.”  
  
The man looks up and smiles saccharine at you. “Well well well, a madame,” he says, and you hate the way he looks at you, “welcome to The White Whale. You want a reservation?”  
  
Do you? You want the identity of that boy, who’s mere mention made the game code pulse alive in your head. You decide to play the role you’ve been given.  
  
“Sure, anything open?” You ask.  
  
He checks. “You like girls or guys?”   


What?  
  
Before you can answer, a door swings open and a huge man comes through. You don’t notice much about except that he is very, very, very disheveled. His clothes cling onto him in a haphazard way as if they’d been taken off and hastily put back on—  
  
Oh.   
  
_Oh_.  
  
You put two and two together. You know what this building is for. And a part of you no longer wants to be here.   
  
But seriously, who is that boy and why did his name make the code come to life and why is he in a… a brothel? Prostitute house? Thing?  
  
The man nods to the one behind the counter and saunters out of there.  
  
The man behind the counter grins at you. “Well?”  
  
“Uh,” you say eloquently, “um… guys.”  
  
Wow you just said that.   
  
“Hm,” says the man, “ok, ok. You have a type, no? Or you just want a quick… lay?”  
  
He’s playing you on purpose because he sees you haven’t been in here before, and he’s getting his humor for the day out of your discomfort. You cross your arms in front of your chest. “Um, yeah,” you say, “yeah, there is, actually. Someone I’ve heard of.”  
  
He doesn’t say anything so you continue.  
  
“I’ve heard he’s popular,” you take it straight from what you heard from the girls outside, “a favorite around here. Showed up a few months ago?”  
  
The man’s eyes lit up in recognition, thankfully. “Oh, yes, yes,” he says, “that one. Yes, I know which one.” His smile looks venomous. “You want that one?”  
  
“Sure,” you say to try to seem indifferent.   


“Hm,” says the man, “that would be $300 for the first hour.”  
  
Six hours ago, you had pickpocketed a drunk man hanging around outside and taken $300 from the hundreds he had.   
  
For the first time in a while, you felt no remorse. There’s the Vriska Serket you know.   
  
You handed the money over to the man, who’s face tells you he knew what you did to get the cash, but he wasn’t gonna do anything about it.  
  
“Wait a moment,” he told you, and gestured for you to sit in the lobby. You sat, you waited.   
  
Five hours ago, a man came down a flight of stairs, just as disheveled as the one who came through the door before, but this one wore a smug smirk that made you feel cold inside. He nodded to the counter man and walked out like he had won the lottery.   
  
Counter man then turned to you. “Room 11,” he told you, “and have fun, girly.”  
  
You walk up the stairs with as much restraint as you have, and once you were on the next floor up, you ran.  
  
Room 11. You slow yourself down before you break down the door, and you knock. No response. Little louder. Nothing. You open the door.  
  
The room. It’s completely bare, not unlike your apartment room when you had first come here. A single lightbulb tries to illuminate everything but it’s pretty much failing. All the room has is a bed and a window, the window has one set of drapes that are tied open.   
  
The bed has one set of sheets, and you can already tell they aren’t exactly clean. On those sheets lies a figure. You see it’s chest rise and fall with exhausted and drawn out breaths.  
  
It’s a boy.   


You see a simple shirt and simple pants on his form, both close to rags, not meant to stay on him, his skin is deathly pale, his hair is a lightening shock of jet black ink save for one strip of blonde that hangs halfway into his face, and his arms are flung to the sides as if in a surrender, his ankle is chained to the bedpost—  
  
The connection blasts through you like a rifle shot. It’s quick, it’s painful, like it rips through you in a blur of numbers and letters and code, and then there is nothing. Nothing but a hole in your body.   
  
You slowly walk over to him. His eyes are closed. You stare at him as he catches his breath. Seconds pass, but it feels like years. His eyes finally flutter open as if it took effort to even look around. His eyes are baby blue, soft and airy, but intense. And now they’re looking right at you.  
  
“Please,” he whispers, “please, gimme a minute before.”  
  
It takes all your strength not to break right there.  
  
Four hours ago, you had broken the links on the ankle chain and you caught it before it fell to the floor. You had insisted the boy, who you refuse to name until he confirms it himself, sleep for now. He looks confused. You had to literally force his knees together to get it across that you weren’t doing shit until he slept. Little did he know, you weren’t going to do shit to him anyway. You were going to break him out.   


Quick scan of the room. Your eyes pick out a lone black dot in the corner of the room, the red light blinking. That’s great. You do a few running jumps up to it before you can get a grasp on it. You tear it off its holder and throw it to the ground, stomp on it with your foot. Bingo. Thinking quick, you lug the boys body over your shoulder and are about to make for the window when you hesitate. It’s the only way the security of this place would think of you to go. They’d come right after you if you left with their… their prized pet or whatever they thought he was. It’d be a matter of speed, and carrying a body down a sidewalk wouldn’t help you go faster. You should’ve thought this through more.  
  
You glance at the bed. You get an idea.  
  
Three hours ago, you and the boy were stuffed together in between the mattress and the bed frame, the sheets pulled down over you. Men were still in the room, searching for you. They had looked under the bed, looked behind it too, but not in between. It was lucky that you and this guy were so skinny. You had left the window open just a bit, a red herring which the security took to heart. You listen to the men talk through their walkie talkies. “Nothing,” one says, “keep scouring the area. Couldn’t have gone far.”  
  
They leave. You wait.   
  
Two hours ago, you snuck out from the bed and carried the boy in your arms, who only woke up once during this venture, so you only had to punch him across the face once to knock him out. You piggyback his body on your back as you open the window and scramble out of it, dropping into the shadows of an alleyway. What now? The brothel men would still be out there, you’re betting. They aren’t exactly kind losers. What do you do?  
  
You spot an empty beer can near some trash. Bingo.  
  
You put your sweatshirt on the boy and sling his arm over your shoulder. You muss our hair into your face, taking the beer can in your other hand. You take a breath. Time to roleplay. You walk yourselves into the street.   


And start to sing as loudly as you can.  
  
You’d seen lots of drunk people around in your time here, and you’ve never been drunk yourself, but apparently you’d make a good drunk. People passing by either give you a wide berth or ignore you. The brothel security from The White Whale pass you by like you’re a crazy drunk lady with her unfortunate boyfriend. Nothing more. They don’t look closely at you, no. They’re looking for a hooded girl and an unconscious body. Not a drunk couple.   
  
You stagger your way out of the seedy side of town. When you know you’re far away, you scoop the boy up and run like you’ve never run before.  
  
One hour ago, you burst into the apartment, out of breath. Jack and Condy are sitting by the food area, Gamzee is asleep on the mattress.  
  
“The fuck, gil?” Condy is first to react, jumping to her feet.  
  
“Kid,” Jack asks, frozen to the spot, “what is that?”  
  
You drop to the ground and lay the boy down. Their eyes tell you they feel the connection too. The blast of game code wakes Gamzee up, who startled awake as if lightening struck him.  
  
Their commotion wakes the boy up. He looks like he’s in a state of shock, mouth hinges open just a bit, eyes blown wide. He stares up at you, then around the room. He stares at everyone individually: Jack. Condy. Gamzee. You. And he repeats.  
  
No one speaks. No one moves.  
  
Gamzee stands and moves forward. He sees it too. He’s just as confused as you are. He steps up close to where you sit and he collapses across from you, studying the newbie. He says what you hadn’t dared say, hadn’t dared express, hadn’t dared think the game so cruel as to make it true.  
  
“Eridan?” Gamzee asks.  
  
The boy hears his name and bursts into tears.   



	11. Chapter 11

An hour later, and you’re sitting outside, stewing over the last twelve hours of your life.    
  
He shouldn’t be here.   
  
What you had done was uncalled for. What Gamzee had done was done in a state of insanity, withdrawal, rage. Both Jack and Condy wanted something, power, and that prompted them to do what they did. But Eridan? What did Eridan do that brought him up to your level? Your former kismesis was a seadweller, yes, but for a seadweller, you found his rages subdued. What he had done in the game before he had died was small compared to the rest of you, knocked one person out, killed two, one of which came back to life and the other  had to die in order for the dream bubbles to start existing. And looking back on what you knew? One word comes up.    
  
Self defense.   
  
Eridan hadn’t made the first move, approaching Feferi and Sollux. Sollux has been the challenger. Feferi has been the one to rush him. He had been the reluctant one, the one defending.    
  
He shouldn’t be here.   
  
And he shouldn’t have even gotten that bad of a punishment. You didn’t need a lot to piece it all together: a young man chained to a bed in a brothel in a shady part of the city? The way he spoke to you, more pleading than talking.    


He hadn’t wanted whatever the brothel made him do. Hadn’t wanted it for almost 3 months. 3 whole months of that type of torture for what? For defending himself? For believing in something a little unconventional? It was terrible, awful, sickening, and it made you want to throw up as much as it made you want to throw that man behind that counter out of the window Eridan had known for 3 months. That would be a sweet, sweet vengeance.  
  
You hear a door open, footsteps come closer to you before they stop at your side. A shuffling. You don’t look.   
  
“The kid is fine,” Jack mumbles, “he’s alive, anyway. Where’d you find him?”  
  
You don’t respond.  
  
“I don’t remember ever seeing him before,” he wonders aloud, “But from your reaction, I’m guessing he was one of the horn kids.”  
  
You nod.   
  
“… never saw him,” Jack repeats.   
  
You still don’t answer.  
  
“… who is he, kid? What did he do?” To land him here, is what he wants to say. But he doesn’t.  
  
You take a breath. “His name is Eridan Ampora,” you tell him, “and he shouldn’t be here.”  
  
Jacks eyes widen.   


“He shouldn’t be here,” you say, “because anyone would have done the same thing he did if it meant what they thought was the greater good.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“What did he do, kid.”  
  
“… he thought he should join you,” you tell him, “switch sides, because he thought it was the only way to survive. He tried to convince people to come with him to join you….” You shake your head. “They weren’t exactly reasonable with letting him switch. He was challenged by one of them to a duel. He won…” you take a minute to recollect your thoughts, just to word this right. “He killed two people who tried to stop him. He blasted our matriorb to pieces just to make a point that we were all doomed and hopeless— the matriorb was the egg to make the Mothergrub to make trolls,” you clarify, “he was sawed in half by one of the people he’d killed, brought back to life. He was the only one of us ‘baddies’ who… who was consistently killed. In every timeline.”  
  
“And you weren’t?”  
  
“Not consistently.”  
  
Your hand finds a phantom sword wound on your chest.   
  
“And do you think he shouldn’t be here?”  
  
“… not with what he got,” you say, “not like that.”  
  
“Whatdya mean?”  
  
You stay still.  
  
“I found him in the worst possible part of town,” you finally say, “in a… I don’t even know exactly what it was, a sex hotel or something. He was…” you hiccup, “… he was chained to a bed….”  
  
There’s a silence that crushes you both then, sitting outside as you listen to the wind howl with the makings of a storm. The sky was cloudy, so the streetlights were on. They didn’t do much to illuminate your face, or Jack’s, who had an unreadable expression on his face, sitting on his features, heavy like a stone.   
  
You cup your face in your hands and feel the deformities and raised tissues on your cheeks and eyes and nose. You want to cry.   
  
“You all are so young,” Jack whispers, and something tells you he isn’t talking directly to you, but to himself, “you all aren’t even fuckin’ big yet, you’re just kids.”  
  
He shook his head. “He wanted in on my side? The kid back there?”  
  
You nod.   
  
“He’s an idiot, he knows that, right?”  
  
You can’t help but laugh a little. “It was his trademark trait,” you hastily mention, “was.”  
  
“He’s on my side now,” Jack nods, maybe to himself, maybe just so you could see. “You all are on my side now. Ain’t fair for kids who don’t know the first thing about gang work like me to go through worse things.”  
  
His eyes blow up wide in realization.   
  
“I’m not on my own side anymore, kid,” he tells you. “I’m helping that kid.”  
  
You nod and shakily reply, “Me too.”  
  
Thunder cracks above your heads.   
  



	12. Chapter 12

**121 days after winning**   
  
It takes a while to get Eridan to respond to his name, but once he does, you feel… proud. You may or may not have pickpocketed a pair of glasses from a cheap kiosk at the local mall for him, just because it was getting annoying to see him trip over things while he paced the room all 5 of you shared. The moment you handed them to him and he realized they were for him, he looked at you with a gratitude you weren’t aware the snobby sea prince was able to express.   
  
Trying to get to sleep that night you realized you had not got glasses for yourself, and hadn’t even thought to get yourself a pair.    
  
You are trying to hate the changes to yourself, but for some reason, you can’t.    
  
Eridan hates touch. Before you would have thought he would be touch-starved, it would be so like the insufferable prick. But he wasn’t. He was terrified of contact, even the slightest touch of light brush by him would send him cowering. You tried not to notice the way he curled over his legs and snapped them shut when he was touched, but you did anyway. He was quieter than he once was. You don’t even try to jab at him, he doesn’t need it and honestly you doubt he’d deny or fight back anymore. He sat there like there was no more fight left to give.   
  
You consider murdering the counter man. But you don’t.    
  
Eridan loved the window. He’d look out down at the street and whisper softly to Gamzee, who would peer out down at the streets and pick out people and cars and things. He also loved to walk. He didn’t go outside much except to get food, like Gamzee. But he would pace the room back and forth, up and down, as if mesmerized by the movement of his feet.   
  
“The Little Mermaid,” Condy joked, “he’s actin like he hasn’t never been a landglubber befoar.”   
  
For all her joking, you, Jack, and Gamzee knew Condy was sweet on Eridan. It might be because they both were seadwellers once upon a time. But she was the one to goad him up in the morning, to give him space, to get him little bits of extra food that she thought no one else noticed. You think she was endeared by him. Gamzee thought it was just because she was getting sweeter. Jack says it’s because she’s seeing the aftermath of taking what you want from someone without their consent.

  
An aftermath it was. A fear of touch wasn’t where it stopped. He couldn’t deal with loud noises, so you had to be careful about your voice when around him. He was a worse eater than Gamzee. At least Gamzee ate in general, and he at least tried to eat according to a schedule (tried being the keyword). But Eridan has trouble eating, period. He’ll stare at a plate of food like it’s a monster, and the first few days he was free he just didn’t eat. At all. Jack had wanted to do a force feeding, and honestly, you had been all for that idea. It had been Gamzee of all people to get that worried look in his eyes, enough to make someone doubt, and Condy who suggested something completely different.    
  
She suggested asking him what he wanted to eat, to tell him he was safe here and he could chose what he ate, and once that was established, we could work on getting him to actually eat it. When asked, Eridan thought for hardly a second before again bursting into tears.    
  
After that, he ate a little bit. But only a little. 


	13. Chapter 13

After Eridan’s arrival, things had settled into a routine. You’d all wake each other up in the morning, whoever woke up first was supposed to wake everyone else up. Breakfast. You, Jack, and Condy would leave to work. Gamzee and Eridan would stay home. You’d be working until late while Condy and Jack went home. And then you’d come back and usually you’d fall asleep within ten minutes of you being there. 

 

Jack and Condy got their hands on a second hand mattress, so they shared that one in the other corner of the room (backs facing each other, of course, they barely tolerate each other). You, Gamzee, and Eridan share the other. Both of them always leave a space for you, the space closest to the door. 

 

The blankets you have are thin, so warmth is something hard to come by. You and your mattressmates sometimes hold hands to try and exchange body heat, just to get some feeling back into your fingers on cold nights. But due to Eridan’s fear of touch, you never do more than hold hands, even if you are an ice cube, you’re so freezing. 

 

Sundays are the days you’re all off. You all spend the day at home, and you all sleep in except for Eridan, who you’ll find him at the window watching the sunrise with wide eyes. You’ve asked him before why he wakes up so early for that. He’s told you in a quiet, raspy voice that he feels safest with you all there, enough to sit by the window without— and he didn’t finish the thought. But you knew. You didn’t understand. But you knew.

 

On Sundays was also when you all splurged a bit. You only had breakfast most days, but Sundays, you ate a whole lot more than you probably should. It was also the day Gamzee and Eridan ate most regularly, since there was someone baring down on them the entire day to make sure they ate at least a crumb of something. You all would sit and take forever to eat breakfast because you all had the time, and the blank places in between were filled with stories, of all things. Mostly stories of your work weeks. It was a silent competition between you, Jack, and Condy on who could make the others laugh most. You had the lead. Then Condy, then Jack. Gamzee laughed most, mostly because he couldn’t help himself. Eridan gave mostly small smiles, rarely giggles, but when you could get one out of him, it was the most rewarding feeling you have experienced in a long time.

 

You go to your roommates for different things. You go to Jack for help, of all things. You still had a small belief that the guy was an asshole, but he was the first person you had met from your world in this hell, and he and you had a special bond. Most of your conversations were either light hearted jabs or heavy hearted confessions, and all usually took place on the doorsteps of the apartment building.

 

You go to Condy if you want to fight. She’s a good person to take aggression out on. After a long week, you two could go at it for hours just arguing. Sometimes you had to take it outside. When you did, it was just to get louder. At the end of every single fight, you two forgave each other. You know she feels the same why about the fights, that it’s a good way to vent out frustration. No one got hurt. And half the time it all ended with a new inside joke between the two of you.

 

It wasn’t so much of you going to Gamzee and Eridan as it was them going to you. They looked to you for support more than Jack and Condy. You were the one to hold Eridan after a particularly bad nightmare, or hum a random tune to Gamzee when he couldn’t sleep. 

 

You learned very quickly not to shoosh them. It got an awful reaction from them both.

 

You have no idea why, but your favorite nights are spent when you can somehow get home early or Sunday nights where Jack and Condy, old coots, fall asleep before you all. And you and Gamzee and Eridan get to be… you get to be six sweeps old again. You chirp in your native language, you talk about old movies and books you teenagers loved. Once or twice, you talk about FLARPing and how much of a colossal bust or a colossal party it could be. It’s nice. 

 

It’s all very nice. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH HECK IT'S BOUT TO GET INTERESTING

One of those special favorite nights, you, Gamzee, and Eridan are all huddled by the window, watching the lights of the city flicker, listening to the sounds of cars and people and the distant thrum of music from down a couple blocks. You had just finished talking about the absurdities that came with using Trollian, and you had all agreed that you missed the platform a bit. Now you were sitting in silence and taking in the city outside. 

 

“I thought I saw one ‘em once.”

 

You peek over at Gamzee through your hoodie, which you never take off now. Eridan peeks over too. 

 

“Saw… saw who?” You ask him. 

 

Gamzee doesn’t answer right away, and the light from outside lights up the scars on his face in an eerie way. “Back way motherfucking when,” he whispers, “what’s not a time when you picked a brother up, sis, from a motherfucking trash heap, I wandered. Motherfucking lost soul, you know?”

 

You nod. Eridan doesn’t react. 

 

“And them streets, sister, were crowded. Motherf***ing filled up to the brim with other motherfuckers. And through them all I thought….” he paused. 

 

“... I thought I saw a motherfucker with this long ass hair wearing this maroon dressy shit, and I thought… thought is was Spookysis.”

 

Silence.

 

“Aradia?” Eridan asked.

 

Gamzee have a small nod of his head. “I thought it was….”

 

You say nothing for a minute, because an accusation like that is insane and pretty damn unlikely, and honestly it’s kind of shocking to even hear it actually voiced. “This is a city,” you say, “it’s probably full of people wearing maroon.”

 

“With that much motherfucking hair, sister?” Gamzee hugged himself. “I know that motherfucking hair.”

 

You lean back against the wall. Eridan continues to look out the window. No one says anything. 

 

“What if they find us?” Eridan practically whimpers, “What if they c-come here and find us and….”

 

He presses his forehead against the glass, his glasses clicking against the window glass. “What would we even fuckin’ say?”

 

“Sorry,” Gamzee doesn’t miss a beat, “I’d say ‘m sorry.”

 

Eridan takes in a shaky breath. “Me too,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “I’d try to say it, at least.”

 

They both are waiting on your answer. You wrap your arms around your own shoulders and let your head thunk back on the wall. 

 

“I don’t know what I’d say,” you decide to say, “but I know I’d…” you squeeze your good eye shut, you don’t have good control over the lazy one. “… I  _ guess _ I would try to say sorry. To a few of them,” you hastily add, “… John. John especially.” That last confession sat heavy on your tongue.

 

“Windy boy,” Gamzee murmurs under his breath.

 

You laugh. “Yeah. Windy boy.”

 

Eridan taps against the glass. “Look.”

 

You and Gamzee peer over to the window. Outside, the artificial bushes on the sidewalks and the papers on the curbs blew like tumbleweeds in the wind, and the lights of the buildings wavered with the first splatterings of rain. 

 

Gamzee lit up. “Can we can we can we?”

 

Eridan looked confused. 

 

“He wants to go outside,” you answer for him, “in the rain.”

 

Gamzee was already at the door and bouncing on the tips of his toes. For a fleeting second, you see why Karkat fell completely pale for the poor clown. He could be so stupid but also kind of endearing, especially at moments like this. 

 

You push yourself up to stand and then you look at Eridan. “You want to come?”

 

Eridan still has his eyes glued to the window. “Ok,” he says anyway. 

 

Gamzee bolts out the door. You are about to follow when you hear Eridan say “What if that was Aradia?”

 

You pause. “Eridan, come oooooooon. We dropped it—“

 

“You weren’t paying attention,” he turned to you, “did you feel it?”

 

“Feel what?”

 

“In your head,” he shivered as he stood. “When you heard Ara’s name? Didn’t you feel the code?”

 

For the first time in your life, you heard Eridan laugh, a full on laugh. He threw back his head and laughed. 

 

He then tipped his gaze back to you, eyes blown up wide behind his glasses and a haphazard smile sitting on his face. 

 

“ _ Feel _ ,” he said, “get it? Like  _ eel?  _ It’s a fish pun, Vris, get it?” With that, he trailed after Gamzee, heavy steps like it was hard to step out.

 

You are starting to think Gamzee is no longer the crazy one here. 


	15. Chapter 15

**184 days after winning**

 

“Girl, I am calling bullshit.”

 

“Bullshit it is not! It’s a king, read and weep. Pick up.”

 

It’s a Sunday. You all are sitting in a circle. Jack may or may not have picked a dock of cards from a street vendor on the way home from work yesterday. And now you all are playing BS. 

 

Condy glares at you coldly like she would spear you if she had her trident or her general powers. She grabs the discard deck and frowns. “I hate you.”

 

“How flirtatious,” You waggle your fingers at her. Jack coughs to hide a laugh and Gamzee hides his smile with his cards fanned out. Eridan is too intent on arranging and rearranging his cards to laugh. 

 

“Guppy, your move,” Condy nods at Eridan. He’s the only one she calls “guppy”. 

 

“What am I?” Eridan asks. 

 

“Aces,” you answer him. 

 

He looks through his cards before taking one between his fingers and slipping it down onto the new discard deck. “One ace.”

 

“Bullshit,” Jack states. 

 

Eridan stares at him and then silently takes the card back. You can’t help but giggle. “It was a good try.”

 

Eridan softly smiles at you. 

 

“I can’t anymore with this,” Condy said, throwing her cards down. She never said “anenememore” now. It had gone unsaid but not unnoticed that she had cut down on her fish puns because of Eridan’s reaction to them. They reminded him of Feferi, you had no doubt. But whenever he heard something he even thought sounded like a pun, he would shrink into the strangest places in his mind. He’d go absolutely crazy for a while. One time, Gamzee said “sounds fishy” out of habit, and Eridan sat in the corner and counted to 10 and back down to 1 the entire day, scaring Gamzee to the point where he sat in the opposite corner until Condy came home. For some reason, when she calls him “guppy” he calms down. So now you were all very careful, and the only thing fish related he ever heard was the nickname “guppy”. 

 

“Well, whatdya wanna do?” Jack gave out, “you gotta better idea?”

 

Gamzee carefully placed his cards down on the ground and leaned into you, which considering his height, was more leaning _over_ you. “Motherfucking story time?” He pleads with big eyes. 

 

Condy stares at him before rolling her eyes. “Fine,” she says, “a story. Such a wig— child.”

 

Gamzee lay down with his head on your lap. Eridan scooted closer to you, not touching you at all. You didn’t hug him closer until he hugged first. Better to not freak him out that way. It was funny, you thought, as Jack leaned back against the wall and got himself comfortable, that you were this courteous to Eridan now. If you had told six sweep old Vriska that she would be treating her ex-kismesis this way, she would have laughed at you. Then again, back then, her ex-kismesis wouldn’t have been violated like he had been.

 

Condy straightened up and cleared her throat. “What do you fucking babies all wanna hear?”

 

“The one bout the motherfucking color-rock-planet,” Gamzee chirps, “that one’s my motherfucking favorite.”

 

“You only hear that one a million times every week,” Jack groans, “maybe more’n that. Can we jazz it up a lil’?”

 

“Tell one about that time you killed the flashy woman,” you suggest, “the one you said came out of nowhere, in the green dress, the rust blood? She sounded cooooooool.”

 

Condy raises an eyebrow at you. “You think that story is cool?” You nod. She sighs, “that ain’t even a good one.”

 

“Is too.”

 

“Y’already know it anyway.”

 

“Do you know a story about pirates?” Eridan asks. 

 

Condy lets her gaze linger on him a little too long, long enough for a flash of nostalgia (recognition?) to cross her long, older features. “I know a few,” she says, “why?”

 

“What about one of those?” Eridan peeks at you as if he needs your approval, “do you wanna hear one a those?”

 

You shrug. “Why not?”

 

Gamzee nods too, more excited than the rest of you. Jack doesn’t respond beyond a “hmph” and a crossing of his arms. He closes his eyes to listen. 

“Old man~,” you call him. He flips you off. 

 

Condy leans on her forearms. She looks at you all and takes a quiet inhale of breath. 

 

“It was a night I dun ever think the ocean will forget….”


	16. Chapter 16

 

By the time she finished telling her story, it was night out. Jack, Gamzee, and Eridan had all fallen asleep during the tale, somehow, and were sleeping sacks of snoozes beside you. Gamzee still had his head on your lap. Eridan had curled up on the floor in a fetal position, but you weren’t about to touch or move him. Jack was still leaned against the wall. 

 

Condy sat there with a frown on her face. She wasn’t looking at you. She was staring at the ground, at how the final words of her story floated in the air and melted into the floor. 

 

You sit there too. Your hand finds its way into Gamzee’s curls and starts to pet him like an overgrown cat. 

 

“I know that story,” you whisper. 

 

She looks up at you. 

 

“The criminal pirate and the royal admiral,” you reminisce, letting your good eye close. “The pirate plays the admiral like a fiddle and their fights are so big the sea foams up? The sea monsters notice? The pirate escapes every time….” You open up your eye again and look at her. “It’s Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. She’s the criminal pirate.” You glance at Eridan. “Orphaner Dualscar is the royal admiral.”

 

Condy gives a dry laugh. “Dunno why that one came out of me,” she shook her head and her hair shook with her, “I got sweeps fulla stories in me and I pull that one out.”

 

“It doesn’t just end with the pirate getting away,” you remember, you remember so well, “the admiral goes to the… to the high priest of the land, I guess? And he asks for her head, and the priest sends his most talented… talented lawyer after her. And….”

 

Condy nods. “Yeah, yeah,” she makes sure Eridan is asleep before she continues, “I know, gil, I know. I know ‘cuz I was there.”

 

You twitch a bit. “You know who--”

 

“I sea her every tide I look at you, gil,” she grits out, and then gestures at the sleeping figures next to you, “and like I dun sea Cronus and Kurloz in their eyes? I sea them. I sea them all the dam tide.”

 

You pause. “Cronus? Kurloz?”

 

“Were their names.”

 

“... huh,” you say. You forgot about that. You shiver. Ok, yeah, you can see creepy skeleton mime clown turning into very scary kill clown, but you were still struggling to see sappy wanna be greaser turning into stoic evil Orphaner. And looking at Condy, was it that hard to see…. 

 

“... your name is Meenah,” you think aloud. 

 

Condy’s eyes widen and she looks up at you. 

 

“Your name is Meenah,” you repeat, “I can’t fucking believe I forgot about that.”

 

Silence. Then she laughs. 

 

“You know a lot moor than you let on.”

 

You shrug. “Not really,” you whisper. “Not anymore, anyway.”

 

She leans back on the palms of her hands, and for a split second, you see the black sky above you cracked with neon colors, the universe breaking apart, but you have braids in your hair and you’ve never felt better, and the girl next to you looks just as good, and she turns to you to smile with bright fuschia lips and blank white eyes--

 

You shake away the thoughts. 

 

“Meenah,” you say, “did you... “

 

She stares at you before answering, “I never knew Aranea pershorenally,” she tells you, “and I never got to krill her fairy boy, that was all Kurly and his tricks and a maaaad pitch hate for the lil’ cavalreaper.” She paused. “I never knew that Kankri kid by name til looong after he got krilled.”

 

You nod. “I know the Sufferers story.”

 

“Who doesn’t,” she huffed, but then sank into an almost reminiscent look. 

 

You can’t stop staring at her and remembering that this woman was once a girl your age with long braids and a crass attitude and big dreams and aspirations. “Do you regret killing him? Kankri?” You ask her. 

 

She looks at you with a look that reminds you of high tide, with the waves lapping at the beach with so much beauty as the it consumed the poor creatures who couldn't escape the rising waters. 

 

“I regret a lotta fins,” she whispers, “so do you. So do all of us. Why do you think we’re here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Sorry for the spam of uploads, though I hope I delivered. 
> 
> Some chapters are vents, but others are fluffier and I just felt like writing fluff. I should be working on a million other things, and I promise I will get to those things, but this is just coming easier to me than others. 
> 
> Comments are what feeds the writing demon inside of me!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! :)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE HEED THERE WILL BE VIOLENCE IN THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS!!! This one is more mild than others but please be warned!

413 days after winning

 

April 13. 2:00 PM.

 

It’s chilly outside for spring. You are walking home, avoiding the few pedestrians out this late. You are tired after a hard day at work. You got to go home early though, which was nice.

 

You walk around the corner to the door to the apartment building, and you see a man and girl standing in front of the main entrance. He’s tall, and you can’t see his face all that well with the way the streetlights were hitting him, but you can see black sunglasses covering his face, and you can see the outline of long dark hair down to his shoulders. The girl is much more petite, and her back is too you, but you can see her cropped hair and her green jacket.

 

Something in your stomach twists a bit. And the code in your head  _ surges. _

 

It had been a while since you really noticed its buzz in your head, but seeing the two standing there sent a rush of binary through your mind enough to make your head swim. Your hand found its way to the building next to you, and clutched the stone like a vice. You slowly walk back behind the building corner and peek out over the side. They haven’t noticed you. They’re too busy with their own conversation.

 

“… even though I think he can be purretty ridiculous sometimes, he’s still… him, I guess,” the girl says, “I haven’t stopped liking him! I can’t help it! Even afurtur all this time.”

 

The man shakes his head. “I will never understand your care for such a person. Do you not find him…” he shivered a little. “A bit abrasive?”

 

“Oh, of course,” she giggles, “but he cares. I know he does! You know it too.” She frowns. “That is why I’m a bit doubtfurl about if he’ll deal with… with  _ him  _ purropurrly.”

 

A sense of dread settles among the code in your head.

 

The man glances at the building. “That would be, considering this is the right place,” he grumbled, “if they cannot find them, we are back to a dead end.”

 

The girl bounced on the balls of her feet. “This has to be it! I can sense it. I know it! They’re here. They have to be.”

 

A piercing scream echoes from the building, and you don’t connect the dots that it was Eridan screaming until you are bolting between the two in front of the door and running up the stairs as if your life depended on it.

 

You were afraid that now it  _ actually _ might depend on it. 

 

You sprint up the stairs to your floor (fuck the elevator), but as you turn on to the hallway, you freeze.

 

There are three people in front of the door to your apartment. A boy and two girls…

 

One girl sees you before you can hide, and her eyes blow up wide and  _ wow  _ the code just exploded in your mind. You wince and step back a bit. 

 

“… _ Vriska?”  _ The girl asks, about to go towards you, “no way!”

 

“I’m not surprised,” the other girl says with a smirk and a glint in her eyes.

 

“Hey,” The boy blocks the first girl from going towards you. “Don’t. We don’t know if the’th dangerouth or not.”

 

The lisp hurt your ears almost as much as the code was hurting your brain. You lean against the wall and hiss a bit through your teeth, trying to stand because  _ intruders  _ and  _ Eridan screamed  _ and  _ the code  _ and  _ something here is very wrong. _

 

“We really found them,” the first girl says in awe, “It eels like forever.”

 

_ Eels? _

 

Another shriek penetrates the air, this time more a mix of a scream and a sob. It snaps you out of the pain of the code. You have to get into the room. 

 

You take a few steps forward which sends the three back. You are trying to place their names, you do know them, don’t you, but nothing is coming to mind except rushing numbers and bits of information that are useless to you. You push it out of the way for now. You go for the door, which apparently snaps the second girl out of it, because she comes between you and the door. 

 

“Nope!” She says cheerily, “you aren’t—“

 

Your life here had been centered around Jack, Gamzee, Condy, Eridan, and trash barrels, so it was a rare few who saw your face. You kept it under the hood always. But the way you were facing her as you stood there made the hallway lights glance off the scar tissue and the discoloring of your skin, and it was enough to make her pause. You use her hesitation to your advantage— you toss her to the side and kick open the door, a glimmer of your past flair shining through.

 

On the other side of the door are four strangers, two boys and two girls. And they are surrounding Gamzee and Eridan. One of the girls has Eridan on his knees, holding him by his hair, and his eyes are blown wide behind crooked glasses and his cheeks are stained wet with tears and oh, they have no fucking inkling of an idea what he had gone through. The taller of the two boys was holding Gamzee’s arms behind his back, on his knees too, but Gamzee just seemed frozen in shock and utter fear. When he sees you, he lights up likes it’s raining and you’re gonna take him outside to feel the raindrops. 

 

The girl sees you and drops Eridan, who curls up on the floor right away and covers his head at her feet, a learned reaction from The White Whale, you’re sure. All four of them are looking at you. 

 

Well, no. Three of them are looking at you. One of them, the other girl, is turned towards you, but she isn’t looking at you. No. Her eyes are glazed over with a white glossy sheen, and she’s unnerving in the way she looks through you. Her smile quickly dissipates when she turns to you, as if she could see who you were without seeing. 

 

A whirlwind of names hits you in the face like a brick. 

 

“Vriska?” The not-blind girl questions, not sparing Eridan a second glance, “is that you?”

 

You don’t answer her. Kanaya. Her name is Kanaya. 

 

Tavros, from where he was holding Gamzee, visibly tightens his grip, making Gamzee wince a little. Karkat has his perpetual frown on, that hasn’t changed at least.

 

Terezi just stands there.

 

It takes a whimper from Gamzee to send you out of your shock and into action. You run at Tavros in a blind moment of  _ get away from my friend  _ and thrust your arms out at him, to knock him over, push him away, anything to just get him away from Gamzee. 

 

He catches both your wrists at the perfect time. Your mouth can’t help but fall open in silent surprise. Did Pupa just…  _ stop  _ you? Is this him finally getting stronger, or are you the one getting softer?

 

“D-don’t,” is all Tavros says before throwing your wrists down and away, and you stumble back. It was enough though. Gamzee crawled underneath you two when Tavros reached to catch your wrist, and quickly made his way to Eridan. 

 

You hear a grunt and spin around. Kanaya’s foot is winding back, and Gamzee is now covering Eridan with his body. 

 

You rush forward again, but… but you don’t try to body check her. You don’t try to punch her. You go and kneel down over Gamzee and Eridan and wrap your arms tight around them, and pull them back at the same time Kanaya kicks. Her foot makes stinging contact with your arm, but it’s not like you can’t go without that arm, you have before. You manage to get your two flatmates with you and you quickly stand, stepping in front of them and facing off against the people you thought you’d never see again.

 

Kanaya looks shocked, and so does Tavros. Terezi is expressionless. Karkat is… still just frowning. 

 

“Stop,” you manage to speak, but you find your voice raspy. 

 

No one says a word. Feferi, Sollux, and Aradia come into the room after watching from outside. And the two from outside before, Equius and Nepeta, run in as well, probably coming after you after realizing who you were.

 

Nine against three, and Jack and Condy weren’t due home from work for another few hours. You didn’t have phones. No way to reach them and warn them. 

 

You feel like lead is pooling in your stomach and you kind of want to cry, but you won’t. For Gamzee and Eridan’s sake. 

 

“… hi,” is the first thing anyone says, and the person to say that is Terezi. You swallow around the ball forming in your throat. “Hi,” you respond, “you all look weird in human form.”

 

“Don’t flatter yourthelf,” Sollux snickers, and at the sound of his lisp Eridan dryly sobs, gets quickly muffled by a suffocating squeeze from Gamzee, and you have the urge to snuggle them both in blankets and keep them from the world. “Thanks,” you squint at Sollux, but you don’t think he can really see you under your hood.

 

“It took a long time to find this place,” Aradia grins wide at you, “a long time to find where you all were.”

 

Did they know Jack and Condy were here too? 

 

You feel sick. 

 

“You left a lot unfinished, you know,” Kanaya said, glaring at you, “a lot left unsaid. Undone.”

 

“Don’t flatter yourthelf,” you mimic Sollux, and smile despite yourself. You feel as though you are gambling with the devil right now, speaking to them all like this, but what else can you do? The more you egg them on, the more time you buy, the more of a chance there is that Jack and Condy can come and somehow break you out of this mess, or even better, buy time for one of you to think something up here. You don’t think holding Eridan by his hair is where the violence will stop, not with the way Nepeta is eyeing Gamzee like he’s her next meal to hunt. He’s purposely not looking at anyone and instead focusing on Eridan behind you. 

 

Kanaya crosses her arms. “You,” she says, “are in no position to speak like that. To any of us.”

 

Tavros opens his mouth to speak, but then quickly closes it. Kanaya’s words shouldn’t hurt you like they do, but they do anyway, and you want to blame the code for making you weaker, but that’s just blaming your issues on something and that makes you weaker and the cycle continues…

 

You shrug. “Guess not, Kanayaaaaaaaa,” you coo, “but at least I can speak.” You shoot a glare at Karkat, who hasn’t spoken and who you haven’t really had a serious history with like you have with everyone else in the room. He doesn’t even acknowledge you beyond a squint. 

 

“I wouldn’t, uh, push it, like that,” Tavros butts in, “none of us, a-are, um, patient, at the moment, uh, Vriska.”

 

You feel a beat in your chest. You don’t look at him. 

 

“What is the plan now?” Feferi asked, and at her voice you can  _ feel _ Eridan breaking apart behind you. “I mean, what do we do? All of us are here, fin-ally.”

 

“I’d like to get to the bottom of what all this… is,” says Kanaya, “because since when did you stand for anyone but yourself? Much less one of them?”

 

You flinch. “Oh, fuck you,” you hiss. 

 

Wrong decision. 

 

She flies at you and you have absolutely no time to dodge her assault. You both topple to the side, her on top, and your hood fall off your face. She doesn’t even blink. Kanaya just swings her fist at your face, and you hear the  _ crack  _ before you feel the pain. You gasp and try to throw her off of you, but she’s relentless. She uppercuts, hook swings at your face, everything she can reach she attacks, and if your face wasn’t scarred enough already before it sure as hell was now.  _ Crack crack crack _ and your vision was starting to blur.

 

And just like that it stops. You roll to the side and cover your face to try and stop the aching pain. Above you, you see that it was Karkat and Nepeta who lugged Kanaya off of you, tugging her away from you and back to where the others were standing. She’s breathing heavy, and the olive skinned complexion her human form had was tinted red with anger or exertion, you don’t know. 

 

You want to disappear and never come back. 

 

You feel cool hands on your shoulder and out from under your hands you see Karkat’s frown morph into a look of shock. 

 

You lean into the touch and roll over to see Gamzee and Eridan have crawled over next to you. Eridan is a complete mess, face stained with tear tracks and glasses almost falling off his nose. He’s holding on to Gamzee like a life line. Gamzee, meanwhile, has the beginnings of tears pricking his eyes and he looks at you, and he’s shaking like one of those old massage chairs you saw at the dump once. He has an indescribable look on his face, one that reminds you of a broken plate or a cat in the rain. Just disappointment and sadness and a mix of fear and anger. 

 

You reach up for them both. Gamzee slips his hands under you and hugs you close, Eridan quickly joining in with a rare show of touch, all three of you hugging close.

 

The silence in the room is deafening. 

 

April 13. It’s now 2:09 PM. 

 

“Die,” Eridan says, “we’re all gonna die.” And then he starts to sing a sea shanty while he cries. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: if any character seems villainized, it's for plot convenience and I actually love them all. 
> 
> THANK YOU TO @pizzabread FOR THE LOVELIEST FANART EVER!!! GO CHECK OUT THEIR TUMBLR THEY ARE AN AMAZING ARTIST, THANK YOU AGAIN AAAAH
> 
> Thank you for your patience with this chapter coming out! 
> 
> Paired with a bad case of writers block, family obligations, and finishing up the year and heading into the summer, it's been a liiiitle rough managing to write and edit this out. I hope it came out ok, because OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH BOY ITS ABOUT TO GET SPICY. 
> 
> Comments feed the writing demon inside of me, so feel free to critique/comment!
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy!  
> :)


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing too graphic in this chapter in terms of gore or anything, but please remain wary of the tags!

 

You are Vriska Serket, and what are the facts?

 

Your former teammates and game players from Sgrub were back somehow in your world, your universe, in the human sphere. They had just attacked your roommates and (dare you say it) friends, Gamzee and Eridan, and now they had taken any and all possessions away from the apartment and locked you inside the room while they left and gathered outside to figure out what to do with you next.

You can't help but keep your eyes trained on the door to make sure they don't come back in.  

All three of you were huddled on your mattress in the corner.

 

Eridan is weeping now, not sobbing or screaming or crying like he was before. He was weeping, long, drawn out sighs paired with tears dripping down his eyes. Gamzee was sitting there in shock, a look of disbelief painted onto his face like his facepaint once had been. And you?

 

You were replaying.

 

Every moment that had just transpired was picked apart, detail by detail, in your mind, the code buzzing around each thought as you analyzed. Tavros and the sudden surge of confidence against you. Kanaya’s cold disregard for you all. Karkat-- since when was Karkat ever quiet? Ever? And Terezi-- what do you even say about Terezi? What do you even say to her? You think you made up in the dream bubbles, you remember something vaguely that felt like a reunion under lots of colored cracks in the sky, but… but she wasn’t looking at you like that had ever happened. Were you imagining things? Had that make-up never happened? Were you still on the whole I-screwed-us-all-over-by-going-after-Jack-and-dooming-our-timeline-so-I’m-going-to-literally-stab-you-in-the-back-to-stop-you thing? Because honestly, it had to happen, so drop it. But… it went deeper than that, didn’t it? Her eyes were so blank… were they always that blank?

 

You feel Gamzee twitch beside you. “What are we gonna do?” He whispers into the air.

 

You shake your head. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

 

He doesn’t respond immediately. “I don’t motherfucking like that answer,” he finally says.

 

You give a dry chuckle. “I don’t either. But I don’t have any other ideas.”

 

“You gotta,” he pleads, spinning towards you with eyes wide, and for a second, his urgency scares you, “you always do, remember, sis? Always do, y’did for motherfucking fish queens, don’t up and not see how you can’t motherfucking whip up a wicked scheme here too.”

 

You actually laugh now. “I,” you stare him down, “can’t think my way out of fucking _this_.”

 

“What makes this different from up and every other plan, sister?”

 

“Everything!”

 

“We gotta,” Gamzee breathes out, hands finding their ways to your shoulders and shaking you a bit, “we gotta we gotta we gotta, otherwise there’s only one motherfucking way out of it and it up and involves that way of getting out by force I ain’t ever going down that motherfucking path again, sister, ain’t none ever gonna go down it, but they will. They’ll hurt. All up and justified to hurt.” He sniffles. “And I like it here. Motherfuckers up in Shangri La prolly ain’t gonna accept me for liking it here, and them motherfuckers out there are gonna send us straight _there_ , sister. _I don’t wanna die.”_

 

His words don’t hit you. They drop on your shoulders softly, building up and up and up until their weight is crushing you and you can’t breathe. You hug yourself hard enough to bruise and shake your head. “That’s it, Gamzee,” you half sob half scream, “they’re gonna kill us, and there is nothing we can do.”

 

A pause. You speak again, only to confirm to yourself what you said.

 

“Nothing we can do.”

 

Gamzee stares at you before sinking back against the wall.

 

Eridan takes his hands off his face. There is red under his eyes and his cheeks look raw from crying. He sits up and smiles so wide you think his face might crack.

 

“You truly think they might? Kill us?” He asks, “If you switch the ‘l’s in ‘kill’ with ‘s’s you get ‘kiss’. Did you know that?”

 

Gamzee blinked before saying, “Um… I up and guess?”

 

Eridan laughs, “I want them to go slow. I deserve slow.”

 

That breaks your heart. You’re not afraid to admit it anymore, how much that simple statement rattled you. “No you don’t,” you practically whimper, “you don’t.”

 

“Yes yes _yes_ ,” he lunges over you and you scoot back on instinct, landing yourself half on top of Gamzee. “Oh yes I do! I do do do do soooo _do_.” He laughs again. “I want it slow and painful, and then maybe I’ll learn. Oh yes, maybe I will!”

 

Eridan Ampora has officially lost it.

 

Gamzee is looking helplessly at him, and honestly, so you are. This is a different type of crazy than highblood crazy or lowblood survival drive crazy. This is pure insanity. Pure insanity brought on by grieving and self hate and a slew of other things you couldn’t name. This is something that Gamzee, even in his sober state, couldn’t touch. That past Gamzee couldn’t even go as deep down the rabbit hole as Eridan has, well, that’s what he looked like anyway. You don’t know how to deal with this.

 

You don’t know anything, do you?

 

Over a year since you got here and you have never cried. But now it all way too much.

 

You choke on the first sob, then the second, then the third one rips itself from your lips and before you know it you’re taking heaving breaths because you can’t breathe and you can’t see through your tears.

 

What are the facts?

 

You’re trapped.

 

You’re scared.

 

You’re doomed.

 

The room is quiet except your crying.

 

“Sorry,” Eridan might have said to himself, maybe to you, “I’m really really sorry.”

 

Gamzee curls up against you and for the first time, he reached over to Eridan and without permission touched him, tugging him over for a group hug.

 

Eridan clings onto both of you. “For everythin’,” he hiccups, “every little thing, I’m so sorry for it. Fuckin’… _fuckin’….”_ He falls quiet.

 

Sleep overtakes you after an hour of pure silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a short chapter today, just the three kiddos having emotions. I'll be uploading a muuuuch longer chpater pretty shortly, maybe even in the next couple of days! :D
> 
> Thank you for being supportive of this fic!! I appreciate every single one of you <3
> 
> Comments feed the small writing demon inside of me, so feel free to leave a critique/comment!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, have the bestest day!


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE BE WARY OF TAGS!!

Thirty minutes after you fall asleep, you’re jarred awake by the door slamming open. Your eye shoots open while the other kind of unsticks itself slowly. You jump up to your feet as fast as possible—

 

And are back down again in seconds.

 

You whip your head up. Kanaya looms over you, and you’re able to see her now human features, dark skin, brown eyes, and brown hair impeccably styled like always. She is backed by five other people behind her. Nepeta and Equius to her left. Tavros, Sollux, Feferi to her right. 

 

You are outnumbered six to three. And all six have perfect reason to kill you all. 

 

They don’t shift into anything. Kanaya doesn’t even warn you before slamming you to the side and straddling you, fisting her hands and going at it with your face again. You grunt and try to shield yourself, which works for a while, until you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Suddenly your hands are ripped away from your face, and you feel weights on both your wrists that make you ache. You look up.

 

Tavros is standing on your wrists with a look of disdain on his little chocolate colored baby face, hazel eyes burning through you, and you almost gape at him, the way he is standing with so much security in himself, confident and sure.

 

It’s irony that he’s standing on your wrists, using his once paralyzed legs to pin you. You paralyzed his legs. Now he’s using them to hurt you. It’s deserved, isn’t it?

 

This time, as you digest that last sentence, you don’t struggle as Kanaya punches you again. You feel a bitterness coming off of her, and she’s really giving each punch her all. You’re glad for it, almost. It’s not Eridan, at least. It shouldn’t be Eridan.

 

You can hear Gamzee almost whimpering and you half wish you could sit up and at least see what they were doing to him, but before you can finish that thought you hear him give a strangled cry and you assume Equius had gotten to him, the way his voice came out gurgled and choking and  _ grating  _ in the worst way and for a split second between hits you imagine what it must have felt like for Nepeta to watch that happen, to watch the life get wrangled out of someone you loved—

 

But did you love Gamzee?

 

Not like Nepeta did Equius, not in a best friend forever type of thing. No. When you think of Gamzee you imagine responsibility, some annoyance, a pull to care for him (did that count as moirallegiance?), and pictures of nights spent under the rain clouds as you both sloshed your feet through puddles and let the rain clean your skin. You didn’t think of pity. You didn’t think of love. 

 

So what were you thinking of?

 

Punch. 

 

Punch.

 

_ Laughter.  _

 

Eridan is laughing now. Chalkboard laughter, laughter like nails on a chalkboard, high and screechy and wild and strained.

 

Kanaya stops. 

 

You are able to peak around her to see what’s going on. Gamzee, like you thought, is caught by Equius, by the neck, and Nepeta is poised to kick him in the ribs. Feferi stands a bit behind Sollux, who has Eridan smushed cheek first into the far wall. And Eridan was just laughing hysterically. 

 

Sollux looks absolutely terrified.

 

He let’s go of Eridan like a hot potato, but Eridan stays there, hands splayed out in front of him on the wall, as if he were about to push himself off. He slowly tilts his head so his forehead is against the wall and just laughs. Laugh laugh laugh. The whole room is on pause, and you realize this is probably the first time any of them have heard him laugh. Even Feferi, who you’re pretty sure has known him the longest, is staring at him like she’s seen a ghost, which he very well could be at this point. 

 

You watch with horror as Eridan continues to laugh, let’s his head loll back, and crashes it forward into the wall. 

 

There’s a sinking crunch, and you see a splatter if red on the wall, and your first thought is there is no way he hit his own head that hard. He did not just try and break his own head. 

 

He winds back up and slams his head forward again. He was actually trying to break his own head. 

 

Sollux looked scared and confused as if he were thinking “hey that’s my job!” which it probably was, and knowing Eridan like you did now, that was most likely why he was—

 

Another crack. 

 

“Stop,” you croak, and try to toss Kanaya off of you, “stop that.”

 

“Why do you care?” Kanaya said, snapping out of it and squinting down at you, “you two were not exactly close, you wouldn’t—“

 

You tug your wrists from underneath Tavros so quickly he doesn’t expect it, and he gives a little “oof” as he fall over. You doing let Kanaya finish her sentence as you use her legs as leverage to roll over and toss her off of you.

 

You guess you still have a few tricks up your sleeve from your FLARPing days.

 

You rush over to Eridan as the others look on in awe. He’s about to smash his head forward again, but this time you are able to tug him back before he makes contact with the now blood splattered wall. Your heart is pounding and your breath feels uneven, but you spin him towards you and cringe at the blood pouring out of his forehead. He stares at you blankly, as if he’s trying to piece together what he’s seeing. 

 

“Vris,” he says, “I don’t think this is a dream.”

 

You blink and then shake your head, “No it’s not.”

 

“I just checked, I knocked my head real good and everythin’. I really don’t think it’s a dream.”

 

“It’s really not.”

 

“If I knock my head more, maybe I’ll fall asleep, the dream will be over….”

 

He turns but you catch him again. “No,” you hush, “just stay here with me for now, ok?”

 

A sound of something dropping. You glance back to see Equius has dropped Gamzee, who is gasping for breath and doubled over as he kneels on the floor at Equius’s feet. 

 

Eridan follows your eyes to Gamzee, then to Equius, a ruffled looking Nepeta, to everyone in the room, and then he stares a bit more before his eyes widen again. “Right. Dyin’. Back to that,” he decides, and tries again to smash his head into wall.

 

“You’re bleeding, stop,” you’re fucking begging now, pulling him away, “just stop, Eridan.”

 

You spin to Gamzee, basically crawling over and dragging him to you and Eridan. “Help me,” you ask, but you think the former clown is hyperventilating instead of just catching his breath. He scrambles for your arm as tears come down his face and he looks at you like a lost puppy. “Sis,” is all he gets out before he chokes on a sob and collapses against you. Eridan makes for the wall yet again, and your free arm shoots out to corral him back. 

 

“Let me,” Eridan struggles against your grasp. “ _ Let me, let me—“ _

 

“Eridan—“

 

“ **_Vriska_ ** _ ,  _ **_just let me_ ** **_die—“_ **

 

“ _ Stop _ .”

 

It’s a loud, scratchy, nails on chalkboard voice that breaks through Eridan’s insistence and your begging. Everyone turns. You feel Gamzee reinforce his grip on you, and he is now really trying to fight for every gasp. You feel Eridan freeze in your hold. 

 

Karkat Vantas stands in the doorway, his one word demand to “stop” holding everyone hostage. No one moves. If you were in a better state of mind, you might say that their faces looked guilty. Of what, coming in here without their oh so precious leader? 

 

“Stop,” Karkat repeats, stepping into the room with his awkward little gait. He comes in front of you and  _ damn,  _ you have never seen eyes that full of fire on any human you’ve come across. You briefly wonder how Karkat’s eyes would look in his normal mutant blooded troll form, if the same fire would still be in there, if the red would set in. If it would still be as surprisingly terrifying as it is now.

 

To your surprise, Karkat turns his back to you and your boys and addresses everyone else. “Leave,” is his simple command.

 

No one speaks, until someone does. “KK—“ Sollux tries to speak, but Karkat cuts him off. “Nope, not a fucking word. We agreed, Sollux, fucking agreed, each and every one of us agreed, to not enact a fucking inch of violent revenge shit onto anyone until we all came up with something that quenched everyone’s ‘tyrannical versus pacifist’ thirst quotas. And you all went and fucked that shit up like you all were in a race to do so. So fuck you assholes. Leave.”

 

“Karkitty, we—“ Nepeta starts now, and Karkat again cuts her off. “I said leave.”

 

“Please listen to our reasoning,” Kanaya halfway pleaded, and that’s when Karkat snapped. “Am I not speaking your  _ fucking language?  _ I said  _ leave,  _ it’s not that hard of a fucking command to follow! Take your sorry asses back out the door. And  **_leave_ ** .”

 

They all exchange glances with each other before funneling back out through the door, one by one, leaving you alone with Karkat and two shaking former high-blood boys holding onto you for dear life. You stand as defiantly as you can, because you’re done breaking down for the time being, and you look him right in the eye when he turns to look at you.

 

His eyes scorch yours. He looks at Gamzee and Eridan, both of whom instinctively flinch from his gaze.

 

Then Karkat walks out of the room and closes the door behind him, locking it with a soft click and leaving you three alone again, to wait out the evening.

-

Karkat comes back in the middle of the night. You are awake. You promised Eridan and Gamzee you’d wake them up if the game players came back. 

 

He drops a packet of medical supplies on the floor and leaves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0
> 
> Comments feed the small writing demon inside of me! Suggestions, comments, and critiques are always appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Have a great day, y'all. :)


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the tags. Nothing actually happens in this chapter, but there are mentions of touchy topics.

414 days after winning

 

You didn’t sleep. 

 

Gamzee is the first one to wake up. His eyes slowly open up, and you watch as they widen, as he remembers what happened last night. One of his hands reaches up and traces around his neck, where you had done what you could and put an ointment on the bruises around his neck that Equius had left. 

 

He then tilts his head up to you. 

 

“Vriska?” He whispers all hoarse and small and god fucking dammit you were going to cry again from the use of your regular name alone. 

 

“Yeah,” you nod, “I’m here.”

 

He crawls closer and wraps his arms around your waist, snuggling his head into your side. You had a throbbing purple body bruise on that side, but you didn’t complain. You let an arm slip over his back, and you tap your fingers against his shoulder. 

 

“Did… did they come, last night, sister mine?”

 

“Just Karkat, and he gave us this.” You gesture at the ointment on his neck, the bandaid you’d put on your face from a nasty cut Kanaya had given you the night before, and Eridan, curled up on your other side, his head tightly wrapped in blood stained gauze. 

 

Gamzee shifted against your side, making you wince internally but not enough for him to notice. “Why’d a motherfucker do that?”

 

You shrug, “I don’t know.”

 

“Them brothers and sisters want us dead.”

 

“I know.”

 

“K-Karbro wants me dead.”

 

You turn to him. He’s gotten so pale since this whole ordeal began. His voice has gotten shakier, his body shivers against yours, and it is hard to imagine he had ever been an insane murderer. 

 

You stop tapping your fingers and instead smooth your palm over his shoulder. “He… he helped us last night.”

 

“He let it up and happen first, though.”

 

“Maybe he didn’t know they were going to… confront us. He  _ and _ Terezi and Aradia weren’t there.” Yay you. High five, Vriska Serket, you said Terezi’s name without a single stutter. Whoopty fucking doo.

 

“That don’t mean nothing,” Gamzee argued, “maybe they didn’t motherfucking up and take whatever instructions he had laid out for how to deal with our motherfucking hides, and that’s why he got a mad anger on.”

 

You fall silent. How do you argue with that?

 

Gamzee peeked up at you, his hair tickling your skin through the fabrics of your sweatshirt. “Where’s Jackbro and fish queens?”

 

“Never came home,” you shakily answer him. 

 

That’s what you were most terrified of now, that Jack and Condy never came home from work last night. Yeah, ok, you, Gamzee, and Eridan had some major fuck-ups in the past, but you all started out as friends with the others. Comrades. Maybe acquaintances in some cases. But Jack and Condy have always been adversaries. They’d always been the enemies. If they had come home last night and been recognized by the others for who they were….

 

You know they would be dead right now. 

 

Gamzee knows that too, which is why he switches from asking you things to staring blankly at a wall as tears began a slow trickle down his face. He didn’t really  _ cry _ . He just stared and let the tears fall. 

 

Your hand finds a rhythm on his shoulder and tries to soothe the realization away. 

 

You glance at Eridan just to make sure he’s still breathing. His chest rises and falls conveniently in time with you hand rubbing Gamzee’s shoulder. For that blessed moment in time, everything is in sync. 

 

And then the door opens. 

 

You hadn’t seen Terezi since she came in that first night, she wasn’t with the group before that had tried to basically kill you last night. She looked the same except for the change of clothes and the dragon head cane she carries inside. 

 

You try not to stare at the cane. But you stare anyway. 

 

She walks in with a purpose, eyes still glazed over with human blindness. She stops a foot away from where you’d lain Eridan and Gamzee to sleep last night on the mattress. A few blood drop stains were all that stood in the way of her and you and your roommates. 

 

Gamzee whimpered against your side and fell quiet. Your hand didn’t falter in smoothing gentle circles into his shoulder. You had forgotten he and Terezi had quadrant beef back on the meteor. You kind of wish you had forgotten.

 

Terezi says nothing for a moment before she takes a loud sniff of the air. The sound alone makes you flinch. You don’t take your eyes off of her as she tilted her head towards the wall where Eridan tried to bash his head in last night, another moment you’d love to forget. 

 

“That’s new,” Terezi comments. 

 

Neither you nor Gamzee respond.

 

Terezi straightens herself out, and you guess no response is what she was expecting, because she plows right on without a pause. “I’ve been sent in here to interrogate you. A few of us have raised concerns about your… recent behaviors. You are acting uncharacteristic.”

 

Gamzee’s grip tightens around your waist. You hear Eridan toss besides you. And out of habit of telling Jack to quiet down, you tell Terezi, “Sh, he’s sleeping.”

 

You can practically taste Gamzee’s horror at your blatant command.

 

Terezi doesn’t react. She just stands there, unsmiling, before leaning into her cane a bit. “Is that so?” 

 

You were going to nod before you remembered she can’t see you nod. “Yeah.”

 

“I didn’t need an answer, I know he’s sleeping, I could tell from hearing the difference in breathing. And I know it’s only you and Mr. Grape Soda Faygo up right now, and that it’s Mr. Grape Jolly Rancher that’s asleep.” Terezi managed to talk herself into a light grin. “I can figure this stuff out. Is that  _ really  _ surprising to you?”

 

Your hand stops moving on Gamzee and instead just tugs him closer. He looks up at you, and you mouth “ _ don’t speak.” _

 

He purses his lips and nods.

 

“So,” The lawyer asks, “I’m going to ask you some questions and I expect some answers. First up, for Mrs. Blueberry. When did you get here?”

 

You swallow. “I don’t know. Over a year ago, now.”

 

“Over a what?”

 

“A year.”

 

“That’s a human time, years.”

 

“And sweeps are trollian, congratulations, there’s a difference.”

 

You revert to sarcasm when you’re nervous, apparently. Jesus, when did Terezi Pyrope ever make  _ you  _ nervous? What has  _ happened  _ to you?

 

Terezi didn’t acknowledge your douchiness. “Interesting. You use human terms,” she hummed, beginning a small pacing back and forth. “Veeeery interesting.”

 

Her pacing was making Gamzee anxious. His arms move from your waist to your neck and he pulls himself up, eyes a scared, tired, tear stained mess, the three scars irritated. He buries his face into your shoulder and doesn’t move afterwards.

 

Terezi sniffs the air. “How long has that been happening?”

 

You take your hand and card your fingers through Gamzee’s mess of hair (you remember that night, a few months ago, when you and Condy had tried to wash his hair. It had been a success in the end but the hallway bathroom had gotten soaked and you had gone through four different combs. Luckily, you were able to lie to the apartment owners and said that it was a flooding thing and this the plumbers fault, not yours. That had been funny). “How long has what been happening?” You ask back, this time not sarcastically, but genuinely confused.

 

Terezi gestured vaguely in your direction. “The affection.”

 

The affection? Why are they all so off put at your ease with the purple bloods? Was it such a bad thing? You start playing with the curls on Gamzee’s head. “I dunno,” you shrug, “I guess a bit after I found him.”

 

“Where’d you find him?”

 

“A dumpster somewhere, it’s probably still on the trash route.”

 

“Trash r-- nevermind. And that was when, exactly?”

 

You think. “Um… I think a month or something after I got here.”

 

“Do you know how you got here?”

 

“…no. I just woke up.”

 

“Hm. And what about sea salt fins over there.”

 

“You don’t want to know.”

 

“Oh yes I do.”

 

“You really don’t,” you warn her, your fingers going to the top of Gamzee’s head to comb through his hair more, trying to soothe his gasps for air as he silently cries out of fear, “You really really don’t.”

 

Terezi’s voice goes steely cold, and you can’t believe you forgot how intimidating your best friend could be when she wanted to be. Her stance looms over you even from a few feet away. “Oh yes,” she reiterates, “yes I do.” She takes a step forward and her boot makes a soft  _ click  _ sound on the floor.

 

The sound alone makes Gamzee seize up again, and you feel every muscle in his arms tense as his breathing becomes more labored and hurried. Terezi has enough decency to freeze as you carefully gather him in front of you, his pupils small as he starts to hyperventilate again for the second time in 24 hours (was that even  _ possible?) _ . “Hey,” you whisper, “I’m right here.” He searches your face for something, you don’t know what, and you can see his mind fighting to calm down through his darting eyes. “Hey,” you repeat, rubbing his shoulders, “hey. It’s ok, deep breaths, c’mon, do it with me.” You take an exaggerated breath and then release it. Gamzee tries to mimic you. “In, out,” you say, breathing in and out in a long and deep inhale, feeling Gamzee’s lungs heave in an attempt to keep up with you through his skin. After a minute or so, his breathing comes back to something normalish, though still wheezy and hurried, but he looks less likely to pass out. You force a smile at him, which he doesn’t return. Instead of trying to get him to smile and act like things were ok, you just gently maneuver his head back onto your shoulder, and his arms go back around your neck like before. 

 

“Hey,” you whisper again to him, “Gamzee, do me a favor?”

 

A small nod against the back of your shoulder.

 

“Cover your ears,” you ask. After a moment’s hesitation, you feel his arms flex a bit and his hands come from around your neck, blocking off his ears as he lets his head drop against you. You take a quick peek at Eridan too. Still sound asleep. You aren’t going to question how, you’re just gonna take it. 

 

Terezi is spellbound by the whole thing. She’s standing there, staring at everything and nothing, and contemplating. “Wow,” she finally murmurs, “this is quite a case. I can’t wait to figure this all out. If I were an amateur, I’d say you’d all gotten into a pale three partnered quadrant.” She laughs at herself. “But I’m not an amateur! I’m the real damn thing. Why’d you have the fucking clown cover his ears?”

 

Anger bubbles in your stomach, but after living with these idiots (lovable idiots,  _ your _ idiots) for so long, you shove it down without much effort. “Because I’m about to tell you about Eridan,” you say quietly, “but Gamzee doesn’t have to know more than he already does.”

 

Terezi says nothing, a strange look coming over her sharp features. Its… no. It’s not fondness. It’s not nostalgia. It’s… reflection, maybe? Reminiscing. Like she’s thinking back on something she forgot. A faraway look. She simply nods, and you take that as a cue to go on.

 

Once upon a time, before you played the game, you were in Terezi’s bright red shoes and you were the one grilling people for information during FLARP campaigns. You know the song and dance. You either talk and live to maybe prolong the time til you get killed, or you keep your mouth shut and die a painful and slow death from torture. You know how it goes. As much as you don’t want to violate Eridan’s sense of privacy more than it already has been violated, you’d rather him live than save his pride— whatever was left of it. 

 

So you tell her. You hold Gamzee tight to yourself as you tell her the story about the girls in the alley, The White Whale, the fucking counter man, the men you saw, the room you found him in, the bed, the chains, the near death state you found Eridan Ampora in, the implied inhumanity and abuse and the clear violation of  _ consent  _ in that place, the quick thinking and the escape you barely executed. You don’t mention the role of the game code. You don’t know if she knows about it. It didn’t seem like they did before, so maybe it could help you later on if you get stuck and you need to get Gamzee and Eridan safe. You substitute the code for a sixth sense in the story. You make up clues in the girls conversation. You make it believable as possible. You are good at the lying thing. You have to be. Please, whatever deity is up there. You have to be. 

 

You finish you story, then you look up at Terezi’s face. It’s been schooled from that faraway look to a neutral one, and you can’t tell anything from her face. But from the way she’s standing, erect spine and one foot tapping at the ground without a sound, you’d bet that she has no idea how to handle that information at all. She just nods.

 

You take Gamzee and nudge his wrist. He lets his hands fall from his ears and he goes back to hugging you tight. “Did you hear anything?” You ask. He shakes his head, his hair tickling your cheek. 

 

Terezi coughs. “Hm,” she says, “that’s a unique alibi.”

 

“You can go there and it will be true,” you say and then immediately regret saying it because if she does go and she asks for someone who knows Eridan, they could ask where Eridan was, and she might give them information that could lead right to his location. You were confident in  _ escaping _ a whole group of those shitty people. You weren’t sure if you could  _ fight _ a whole group of them all alone.

 

“I don’t plan on it,” Terezi drawls, and you internally let loose a breath of relief, “but that doesn’t mean I’m done yet.”

 

You shrug and let her keep going. 

 

“All three of you live here alone, right?”

 

_ They don’t know about Jack and Condy.  _

 

Yes, yes,  _ hell yes. _ They don’t know. Hope flutters in your chest. There was a  _ chance _ .

 

“Yeah,” you answer her, focusing on patting Gamzee on the back so she can’t read (sniff?) your face from afar. 

 

“There are two mattresses here.”

 

“I usually sleep on the other one, but recent circumstances have surfaced,” you tell her with a bit of bitterness, “that have forced me over here to this side of the room with these two.”

 

Terezi is quiet for a moment. You watch her neutral face break into something younger, more vulnerable, and she doesn’t speak for a second. Then. Then. Then she speaks. 

 

“Who  _ are  _ you?” She barely speaks above a hissing whisper, “you can’t be Vriska Serket.”

 

You’re thrown off guard. “No, I… what?”

 

“There’s no way,” she breathes out, “you… you never care this much ever. You… you only ever care about yourself, not anyone or anything around you. It’s your irons in the fire! Always! Remember? What’s gotten into you?”

 

Wow, well, why didn’t she just stab you in the back now, that might have hurt less.

 

You squint and tilt your head, burying yourself a bit in Gamzee’s curls. He smells like rain drops and candy (Jack gets him candy every month, he loves lollipops). “I don’t know what you mean,” you shrug. 

 

“Yes you do,” Terezi’s voice is getting chipped and accusing, more so than usual, “you’re answering everything I ask, you aren’t giving me any trouble. And I  _ know  _ you know that I use FLARP interrogation tactics, and I know you know how FLARP interrogation works, and I know that Vriska Serket would be pushing her luck with me because she has  _ aaaaaaaall  _ the luck! All of it! She’d be tempting fate and seeing how angry she could get me before pulling the master escape plan out of her ass and somehow making it work to a flawless T. She would not be  _ cooperating,  _ of all things, would not be sitting there telling me everything I need to know with way too much honesty, and she would not be doing all of those said things  _ while hugging the fucking clown that ruined my life in more than one timeline.”  _

 

“ _ Sh,”  _ you shush her, pressing Gamzee’s head down to your neck as if that will help him and save him, “don’t bring that up when he’s right here.”

 

“Don’t make this about him, he’s a whole other conversation. I’m talking about what the fuck happened to you.”

 

“Nothing happened to me.” Your voice is starting to come out as a growl.

 

“Then why are you being so easy? What’s your plan?” Terezi takes two more steps forward, her cane making one single  _ clack _ as he brings it forward too. “Where’s the trick?”

 

“There is no trick.”

 

“Yes there is.”

 

“No there isn’t.”

 

“There has to be, you’re Vriska Serket, you always have a plan up your sleeve—“

 

“ _ Stop thinking that _ !” You practically scream. “No I don’t! I don’t. I just want us to get out of whatever  _ you  _ all have planned for us, and I want to get out alive.”

 

Terezi is frozen in front of you, and you’re positive you’re gripping Gamzee hard enough to bruise. No one moves or breathes for what has to be at least five minutes. Then Terezi stiffens, spins on her heel, and speed walks out. You watch her slam the door behind her. There’s a loud click of the door being locked before everything is silent again. 

 

You cradle Gamzee to you for a little while longer. 

 

Eridan slowly sits up from where he was lying before. He touches his gauze wrapped head, looks around, and then looks at you. 

 

“How long have you been up?” You ask softly, not wanting to upset Gamzee more than he already was.

 

“I never went to sleep,” Eridan answers you.

 

“… what?”

 

“I never went to sleep.”

 

You stare at him. “You… you heard all of that?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

You bite your misshapen lip. “I’m sorry.”

 

“For what?”

 

“What I told her. About you.”

 

“Oh, that,” he giggles, and damn you need to get used to the giggling, even after all this time, “I don’t mind that. Wish you woulda paid attention to detail though.”

 

“…what do you mean?”

 

“Men weren’t the only ones who took me,” he says all chipper and high pitched and bouncy as if he weren’t talking about being abused and raped, “women took me too.”

 

You can’t help but stare at him. Gamzee, too, peels himself from you to look at Eridan with wide eyes. 

 

Eridan studies you both and then he shrugs. “You left that part out, Vris.”

 

“I…” You don’t know what to say to that.

 

Eridan looks at his hands and then back at you. He touches his head, looks around again. Pauses at the bloodstain on the wall, the one he left there himself. He then look at you. 

 

“Humpty Dumpty,” he sing songs in a shaky voice, “sat on a wall.” He settles down next to you, “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” You watch him lay his head down on your lap. It’s the first time he’s made contact with you like that for ages, that warm friendly contact you and Gamzee and even Jack and Condy sometimes shared in. 

 

“All the kings horses,” Eridan begins to cry as he goes on with the nursery rhyme, “and all the kings men,” he reaches out for Gamzee, and you watch as Gamzee meets his hand halfway. They clutch each other’s palms without any intention of letting go. You feel Eridan's tears soak into your pant leg. 

 

“Will never put Humpty together again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THREE THOUSAND WORD CHAPTEEERRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! 
> 
> YAY! What a chapter this was. I hope it was as interesting to read as it was fun to write. 
> 
> Comments/critiques feed the writing demon inside of me!!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate every single one of you. <3
> 
> Have a nice day! :)


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Life has been a jerk.

That night, all three of you are awake, but no one is talking much. You are leaned against the wall. Eridan is busying tracing shapes into your hand to distract himself (it’s the most he’s touched you ever) and Gamzee is pressed shoulder to shoulder with you, cheek lying against the top of your head as he stares at the door. You know he’s anticipating them coming again. You know he’s just as terrified of it as you are. You don’t know about Eridan. He’s become unreadable.

 

The door knob rattles and opens. Gamzee tenses, and Eridan stops tracing your hand and puts it in a death grip instead. 

 

Sollux walks in and studies you all. He squints, then he looks straight at Eridan. You feel your friend shrink beside you, and he curls closer to you. 

 

“Fight me,” Sollux says, and for a minute you think he’s mocking you or being sarcastic or something. But then you see the heat behind his eyes, two different colored human eyes, and you realize holy shit he actually wants to fight. 

 

You hear Eridan’s breath hitch, and you understand. Sollux doesn’t want to just fight. He wants a duel. 

 

“What’th wrong, you thcared now?” Sollux spits, “weren’t tho thcared when you blinded me and thot FF through the chetht, were you?”

 

“Stop,” you choke, trying to block Eridan’s ears, but he heard. You feel him begin to sob, and he’s already starting to shake. 

 

“Mmm, lemme think about it. Nah.” Sollux waves at Eridan, beckoning him forward. “Come on. I won’t uthe my thionicth. You don’t have your thitty wand. It’th one on one. Let’th go.”

 

Eridan whimpers. You turn and hug him, shielding him from Sollux. “No.”

 

“You aren’t him, VK, jutht let him fight me.”

 

“He doesn’t wanna fight.”

 

“Thinthe when.”

 

“Since now,” you hiss, because talking to Terezi about Eridan is one thing, but you aren’t going to explain to Sollux Captor of all people why Eridan doesn’t want to fight him anymore.

 

“Don’t thtart with me. I’m tired of whatever charade thith ith. The… the fucking  _ paleneth _ of it. If you think you can get uth to pity you enough and thwoon for your diamond endeavorth enough to forgive everything you did to uth, you’re wrong.”

 

“Then I’m glad that’s not the case,” you retort. 

 

“It ith though and you’re jutht lying to uth.”

 

“No we aren’t.”

 

“Tho are.”

 

“Just accept,” you bite out, “that things have changed!”

 

“Thingth don’t jutht  _ change,  _ not with bulge biting, pan rotted, nook thucking pietheth of  _ thit _ like you!”

 

“Brother.”

 

You pause and turn your head, as does Sollux. Gamzee’s face is a blank slate, eyes relaxed. You watch him lean over and slip his hand over Eridan’s wrist. He tugs. 

 

You watch in horror as Eridan’s fingers come away from his own skin, wet with red. 

 

Your eyes follow the red down to the insides of his forearms, where long scratch marks stand out against the paleness of his skin. Blood seeps out of the scratches and the skin around it has turned puffy. 

 

Gamzee takes Eridan’s other hand, similarly red from scratching straight through his skin, and holds him by his wrists. Eridan doesn’t react, and just continues to bury his face into your shoulder, his glasses digging into your shoulder bone. 

 

“Please,” Gamzee pleads as soft as a feather, “if y’all gonna kill us, don’t motherfucking do it like this. You’re stressing a brother out,” Gamzee shakes Eridan's wrists for emphasis, “to the point where he up and don’t know what to do cept self destruct.”

 

You whip your head back to Sollux and realize that this is the first coherent thing he’s ever heard Gamzee say. 

 

His eyes dart to each of you before he storms up, slaps Eridan hard, and almost jogs out of the room, closing and locking it behind him. Eridan lets it happen, and then he tries to run his nails down his arms again. Gamzee holds him firm. 

 

“Hey,” you whisper, “Stop that. He’s gone now.”

 

“Gone,” Eridan mutters, “g-o-n-e. Gone.”

 

“Good job, knucklehead,” you joke, “you can spell, now ssshhh. Stop trying to… to do that. He’s gone.”

 

“They like it when I bleed.”

 

“No one likes it when you bleed.”

 

“I don’t bleed the same color I used to. I used to bleed such a nice color.”

 

Gamzee doesn’t react to that comment, which is a feat. 

 

“Well it’s still better in your body than out, so you can…. Just, please, Eridan. C’mon. For me.”

 

Gamzee softly nudges you with his forearm.

 

“For us,” you correct yourself.

 

Eridan takes in one shuddering breath, and then nods, as if agreeing hurt more than scratching did.

 

You all eventually fall asleep, too tired to stay up to keep watch. 

 

But Gamzee still grips Eridan’s wrists throughout the night. And you still support both of their heads on your shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> W H E W
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I know I don't get to replying to the comments, but please know I appreciate every single one of them, much like I appreciate every single one of you. 
> 
> Comments and critique do fuel the writing demon inside me!
> 
> Above all, I hope you're enjoying this, and thank you for reading. 
> 
> Have a great day! :)


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0

Around 45 minutes later, there’s a knocking on your window. 

 

What the fuck. 

 

You sit up, rubbing your more functional eye. The two boys on either side of you seem dead to the world, so you gently move them aside. 

 

Gamzee is still holding Eridan’s wrists in his sleep. The blood on Eridan’s forearms has dried, leaving a sickly rust on his skin. It’s going to need bandages from whatever is left in the first aid kit. 

 

You go over to the window and peek out. 

 

“Oh,” you whisper, “oh thank god.”

 

And lo and behold, looking up at you are Jack and Condy, with Condy holding a few pebbles in one hand and Jack holding a big rock in his. She gestures his hand down, and you watch as he reluctantly drops it. They both look unharmed. Fine and dandy. 

 

You breathe for the first time in 48 hours. 

 

You open the window latch and hike up the window. They both pause their small bickering about the rock (bless their normalcy right now) and look up at you. You lean out. 

 

“Guys,” you say, trying to be careful about your volume just in case one of the others heard you, “There you are! Where were you?”

 

“Kid, thank god,” Jack sighs in relief. “You’d think you had already been offed with how deep you sleep.”

 

“No time,” Condy hisses at him, “Gil, where’s the others?”

 

“They’re here, they’re… they’re here.”

 

“We gotta get you out of there,” Condy states, glancing around, “fast.”

 

“No shit, tell me something I don’t know,” you say. “But how? There’s no way down there unless you want us to just leap to our deaths from here.”

 

Condy shrugs. 

 

“Hey,” Jack thinks aloud, “I have a few jackets in the cabinet.”

 

“Ok,” you nod, “thanks for the info.”

 

“Fuck you, just tie them together and make a rope. If it ain’t long enough, we’ll just catch you from there.”

 

You open your mouth to retort that that’s a stupid idea, but you find that you can’t really retort. It’s actually not a half bad idea. If you tie the knots tight enough, they could hold long enough for Gamzee, Eridan, and yourself to slip down. You shut your mouth and nod. “Ok,” you agree, “when should we do it, though?”

 

“Now”, Condy demands, “now of never. We got no idea what they want, and I don’t—“ She pauses and you can see her mind try to process the words she wants to say, can see the concern in her eyes from so far up, can see the flurry of her hair as she tries to shake it off. “I don’t wanna deal with them if this don’t work.”

 

“You don’t want us to get hurt,” you correct her, a smirk tugging at your lips, involuntarily. 

 

Condy crosses her arms. “Shut up before a make you. Times ticking, hurry.”

 

You quickly shut the window and turn to your roommates. You debate waking them up for .08 seconds before deciding they should not only know what’s going on, but they could help make this rope. You gently shake them awake.

 

“Hey,” you hiss a little, “guys, wake up.”

 

Gamzee blinks his eyes a few times, then groggily props himself up on his forearms. Eridan just shoots his eyes open and sits up straight. 

 

“Come help me,” is all you say, not wanting to waste time on an explanation. Gamzee wakes up a bit at that, a smile appearing on his face. “Y’all up and got a plan, sis?”

 

“Yeah,” you answer, going over to the cabinet and scooting it in front of the door so no one can come in, “come on.” 

 

They both help each other up and scramble over to you. You quietly open the cabinet and hung on the rack next to an extra sweatshirt you managed to nab from the trash and Condy’s work jacket are four long trench coats Jack totally did not shoplift somehow. How convenient. 

 

You practically rip them off their hangers. “Let’s spread these out,” you say, and all three of you take the coats and lay them out in a line on the floor, end to end. You gesture to them both and demonstrate tying the tailcoat end of one coat to the collar of the other, bunching up both parts of the cloth before knotting them together. 

 

“Just do this,” you whisper, suddenly cautious about making any suspicious noise and wondering if there was a time as to when the players would be checking on you again, “and quickly, ok?”

 

Gamzee and Eridan nod and do as you asked quickly, even though Gamzee struggled with his knot, which Eridan helped with. In under a minute, you had a good long rope of sorts. You wave them with you as you take the rope and drag it to the window. You swing open the latch, and look down at an impatient Jack and Condy.

 

“That shouldn’t have taken so long, kid,” Jack hisses up at you.

 

Gamzee’s face splits into a grin and Eridan smiles gently at the sight of the two adults from your room. “Jackbro, fish queens!” Gamzee calls, and you slap your hand over his mouth because if volume was the thing that made this all go south, you were screaming. “Sh,” you tell him, and then you lower the rope down the stretch of building without windows. It reached almost down to the canopy of the stoop of the apartment. 

 

“Not long enough,” you curse under your breath.

 

“We’ll just catch you,” Condy decides, stepping under the rope, “y’all aren’t that heavy. I gotta catch you though, ‘cuz Jack here can’t catch shit.”

 

Jack looks offended. 

 

“Ok,” you nod, because in the end you trust them. You look at Gamzee and Eridan, then back at the door. 

 

“You guys first.”

 

Gamzee is the first one because he’s the tallest. If he falls, he won’t fall that far, because of his height. He shimmies down the makeshift rope and plops down safely into Condy’s arms. You let go of a breath you forgot you were holding. 

 

“Your turn,” you whisper to Eridan, and offer you palm to help him. He takes it, and his skin is clammy and he’s shaking so hard. You swallow and begin to guide him over the window pane.

 

And the cabinet blocking the door jostles.

 

You and Eridan freeze, with Eridan straddling the window pane. Your eyes are glued to the door.

 

_ Bang.  _ Another jostle, and this time the cabinet wobbles. There’s no lock on the door, not one that works, anyway.

 

They’re trying to get in.

 

“Shit,” you hiss, and you guide Eridan out the window a little faster.  _ Bang bang bang.  _ You have no doubt that they’re trying to ram it open.

 

You hear a faint voice calling “Equius!” out there. Double shit. If they get that sweaty excuse of a living organism to the door, the cabinet will never hold. 

 

“Hurry,” you usher your friend out and to the rope, and you gently help him onto the main part of it. His eyes are blown wide behind his glasses, and his entire body is shaky with fear. “It’s ok,” you reassure him, taking the hand you were holding and placing it on the rope. “Just focus and go.”

 

He stares at you before nodding so sharply his glasses come a bit lose from his nose, and he slowly begins to descend the jacket rope.

 

_ Bang bang. Bang bang.  _ And you hear a faint “oh Equius, there you are.” 

 

You peek down and out the window. Eridan is halfway down. Gamzee is hugging Jack like a vice. Condy has her arms outstretched, ready to catch Eridan and take him down to the ground. 

 

You turn back to the door just in time to see the cabinet wobble almost completely over with the force of the ramming at the door. Your eyes dart from the door to the window.

 

A lot during the game, you contemplated what it meant to be a hero. 

 

To do the good or the bad thing, wrong or right. And just because you were a bad person, and you  _ knew _ you were a bad person, did that mean you couldn’t be a hero? What did being a hero even mean? Did that mean hero to thousands or just one person? Did that mean killing many for the few or killing one loved one for the many? You could argue with someone that maybe that was your entire arc right there, was what it meant to be heroic in a world where the word “hero” didn’t correspond to “mean”. 

 

You know you have a decision to make here. You know what decision you’re gonna make because you’ve already made it. And now you understand the term “hero”, because now it makes sense. You don’t want to be a hero, is the thing. Not now. But you know that when your roommates— no, your friends— fuck it, your  _ family,  _ realize what you did, you know they’re gonna be devastated, but they’ll see you as a hero. 

 

You guess, sure, you don’t have to be a good person to be a hero. But you don’t have to  _ want  _ to be a hero to be a good person. 

 

That’s why you take the knot that’s tying the rope to the window, tug it loose, and slam the window shut, not looking to see if Eridan had fallen safely into Condy’s arms or not, and diving into a ball on the mattress to feign sleep just as Equius busts the door open so hard, the cabinet in front of it shatters into splinters. 

 

In the moment of silence that follows, that one precious moment, you hope the others can get away. 

 

You know you’re not only fucked now, but completely alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AGH honestly missed writing for this fic. Sorry I slept on it like I did, I couldn't find an excuse if i tried. 
> 
> Anyway, HOOOOOOOOOOOO things are getting SPICYYYYY!!!!!! Who will live, who will die, and how many self indulgent redemption arcs can I fit into one fic? We'll see next time.... 
> 
> Comments/critique feed the writing demon inside me!!
> 
> And thanks for reading, you always make my day. :) Have a nice one, y'all.


	23. Chapter 23

You are Vriska Serket, and wow did they all look more pissed than usual. You fake sitting up and rubbing your eyes as they storm through, stepping over the splintered remains of your cabinet. Shame, you had good memories of that cabinet. Spare clothes now lie on the floor, but you don’t look at them as you squint at the intruders. “That’s one way to say good morning,” you groan. 

 

“Where are Gamzee and Eridan?” Karkat asks you, his voice the same raspy voice you know, unchanged by time. You try to search for any concern in his voice, any sign that maybe he still kinda pities the two former highbloods, but his face is stoic, Strider level stoic. It’s as if he never helped you at all.

 

You already have a plan in your head. You wake up a bit and look around. 

 

“I… I don’t know,” you shrug, “I guess they managed to get away.” You smirk even though your  _ lungs _ are shaking from nerves. “Good.”

 

You really hope Jack and Condy were smart enough to get Gamzee and Eridan away. You hope they don’t try to bust you out of this. You hope you’re right on some level, and that they really are away. 

 

Kanaya flat out scowls. She turns to Tavros and nods. “Come with me if you will, Tavros. They couldn’t have gotten too far.”

 

He nods and follows her out. Now you  _ really  _ hope the others had the sense to book it. 

 

“They left mew alone,” Nepeta purrs, “how rude.”

 

You glare at her. “Maybe they were scared.”

 

“Mew all seemed so close befur, though. They seemed to like mew. Did something change?”

 

“Maybe,” you grimace, and force yourself to stand despite the protest of your exhausted body, “they just were smart enough to get away quietly enough that I didn’t notice.”

 

“You don’t feel disturbed by their insubordination?” Equius butts in. 

 

You stare at him before averting your gaze to the floor. “No.”

 

They all stare back at you. 

 

“We fin-ally flounder you,” Feferi whispers, her voice air light, “we can’t lose you now.”

 

“What does that matter to you?” You snap at her, causing literally everyone else to unsheath their weapons in your direction. Your eyes dart to each blade tip, each defense stance, each cold stone eye. You take a deep breath. In, out. “I thought you wanted Eridan out of your life.”

 

Feferi studies you for a moment before pursing her lips. “I do,” she confirms for you, “but that doesn’t mean I want him dead, and that doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to him first.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I want… I want some questions answered.”

 

“You saw him,” you drop your voice, “you saw him here. That Eridan, from the meteor? That’s not the same Eridan.”

 

Feferi switches her weight from one foot to the next. “I minknow. But… but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to bring him back.”

 

You shake your head, and glance in Terezi’s direction. “I don’t think you understand that what he has can’t be fixed. It’s not a disease. It’s….” Jack used the word once, what was it? “... trauma,” you find the word, “it’s the aftermath of trauma.”

 

“We’re all traumatithed,” Sollux spat, “he’th not thpethial.”

 

“You don’t know half of it,” you spit back. 

 

You watch the psionic squint and crackle electricity through his fingers, a skill you would have thought disappeared when he took a human form, but whoops, you were wrong. Wow, you, being wrong? That’s… that’s new, huh. 

 

“What half of it don’t we know?” Aradia chimes in. The sparkle in her eyes tells you that she knows something that everyone else doesn’t, and it’s making you uncomfortable. 

 

“Do you want my life story?” You cross your arms as you speak.

 

“If that means you’ll tell us about how you got here  _ in detail?”  _ Aradia giggles, “Yes. Yes, we do.”

 

You stare at them. The longer you keep them here, the more time the others have to get away.

 

You open your mouth. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!!
> 
> Have a splendid day, y'all. :)


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *comes back a month later with starbucks* Have I made this joke yet? Probably? Yeah probably. 
> 
> A spicy little switch up-- now in the form of Condy's perspective, in a theatre near you. 
> 
> Out just in time, right before 4/13. Happy Homestuck month, y'all!

Did…

 

Did that gil just…?

 

No.

 

Holy carp, no fucking wave.

 

Your name is MEENAH PEIXES, also known as HER IMPERIAL CONDESCENSION, and you think that that Serket girl just absolutely tossed the fish buoy out the window and slammed it shut so fast heads probubbley were spinning, and you barely managed to catch the little guy in your arms, it was so sudden. Sudden for him too— his eyes blew up wide behind his glasses as if they were going to pop out. His arms scrambled for purchase on your neck, and he didn’t even get to scream, it just came out in a lil’ huff. Kinda adorabubble.

 

The clown and the other guy (you haven’t graced him with a nickname) are standing frozen as you let Eridan down onto the ground. He doesn’t let go of you, making you crouch with him, his legs shaking so hard he has to hold onto you to stand. You peer up at the window.

 

No girl. No sound. No nothing.

 

“Did she just fucking leave?” Jack muttered.

 

Gamzee shook his head. “Nah, spidersis would never.” He paused. “Uh… right?”

 

You feel something soft against your neck, and you look at Eridan. His hair is brushing against your skin as he shakes his head, and it’s then that you realize the bandages tightly wound around his head. “I…” He starts, and then stops. Ugh, this fucking  _ buoy, _ such a wriggler, he’s going to be the death of you.

 

You pat him on the back, being as reassuring as you can, and usher him on with a little nod of your head.

 

He stares at you and then back at Jack and Gamzee. “She… I…” He swallows. “I… I heard… somethin’. In the room, w-while I was c-comin’ down. A… a  _ bang.” _

 

Oh no.

 

Oh hell no.

 

Oh hell fucking no.

 

“A bang,” Jack repeats, eyes squinting.

 

“Yes,” Eridan says in a low hiss, his grip on your neck becoming iron-locked, “a bang. Wood. A bang on wood.”

 

The door in that infernal room is wood.

 

It doesn’t take you long to piece shit together. You look at Jack and you know the prick knows it too. 

 

The girl was almost as good as gone.

 

“We have to go,” you breathe, still in a state of disbelief, taking the little fish in your arms and beginning to tug him off.

 

“W-what?” He whispers in an equal state of denial to you. “Wait, w-wait, we have to g-go get Vris, she d-didn’t come w-with me….”

 

You couldn’t. You couldn’t go back unless you wanted the whole school of you culled. You knew that and you’d bet money that so did the girl. And she would have pushed the buoy out only if there was an actual danger.

 

Holy glubbing shit, that  _ idiot _ .

 

“Come on,” you repeat your demand, “we have to go.”

 

Eridan doesn’t seem to process your words. 

 

Until he does.

 

And makes it very well known that he thinks it a cod awful idea.

 

His arms start thrashing and you’re almost knocked onto your bass by the guppy. You make eye contact with the clown get as you attempt to wrestle Eridan down and keep a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t give you all away. He’s standing erect with Jack a foot away, and while in your experience, clowns can get all crazy and whatever with their rages, even more so than you seadwellers can, and you’d expect the lil’ fucker to already be going off. But he’s just standing, still as death, and his eyes are deep as fuck. 

 

“Eribro,” Gamzee’s voice comes out all hoarse and gravelly. The fucking shrimp doesn’t stop struggling in your arms. “Eribro,” he says again. He’s still resisting you. “ _ Eridan, _ ” the clown begs, flat out begs. And maybe it’s his tone, or the way he stands, or the way he is being all sincere, maybe it’s even the way he said his full name. But you feel the guppy go limp in your arms, the only muscle twitch on him being the twitch of his chest as he heaved a sob. You don’t mull over it much. You just grab the buoy and usher the others on and go. You hear Jack’s and Gamzee’s footfalls behind you, hitting hard on the cement as you rush down the sidewalk. You don’t pay attention to where you’re going, you are more focused on getting away and on Eridan’s small whimpers in your arms.

 

Glubbing shell, what has happened to you? Since when did you find shrimp like this… whale, no. You don’t pity him, not romantically. In pike… the most platonic wave possibubble. Like a… a…

 

The human term “mother” feels bitter on your tongue, so you don’t say it.

 

Jack suddenly hisses a “This way,” and you’re snapped from your short reverie. You slid to a stop and turn. The bastard is waving you into an alley next to what you think is a coffee shop. Maybe the one he works at? You don’t care. You coddle your guppy (he is your responsibility at this point) and you run into the alley after Jack, Gamzee hot on your heels. You all collapse at the back where you’re blocked by a brick wall. You take a minute to breath.

 

“Holy carp,” you wheeze, because you’re still tryna wrap your head around everything, and of course the pun sends Eridan into a little bout of hysterics, so you shush him down and get the poor shrimp’s breathing under control because yeah he’s hard to work with, but he’d be more of a problem unconscious. 

 

None of you speak.

 

The sounds of the city go past the alley as all four of you sit there to try and grasp your situation more firmly even though none of you really want to. Those fucking grubs were trying to rehash what had already been hashed, and the moment you saw them standing outside the apartment door you knew it had been too late to grab your own little grumbling grubs. So you had stopped Jack a block away from that fucking hellhole room, explained, and got him to think something up with you. You came up with nothing except throwing pebbles at the windows and hoping for the best. What the shell, you thought, it was your best bet without those fucking pests throwing pointy objects at you. 

 

Normally, pointy objects wouldn’t move you in the slightest. But past experience has told you that human bodies aren’t all that impenetrable. You want your old body back. You look good with a black carapace shell. You look better in a body suit, but waterever, that could come later. Either way, you were moor useful alive than culled by a foreign flying object. 

 

And then one fin lead to anotter. And now you were here.

 

The clown is murmuring to Jack in a low tone. Jack doesn’t seem to be eely listening. He’s staring at the wall, taking deep breaths. You’re cupping your little guppy’s head to your chest, keeping his form close to you as he will allow, his breathing finally calming down and his eyes drooping in what you hope to cod is fatigue. Sleep would actually do him good now. You stare up into the sky, the filthy human sky, laced with stars and the single moon and empty space that still looks conquerable, after all this tide. 

 

Gamzee finally seems to give up on Jack and he looks at you. “Fish queens,” he whimpers, poor guppy has a voice that wobbles more than a wave in a storm, “fish queens… what are we gonna up and do?”

 

You digest his words.

 

You contemplate.

 

“Y’know,” you finally say aloud, your tongue working ahead of your brain, “I’ve always wondered if there was a sixth of us.”

 

Gamzee blinks. “Whatchya mean, a sixth?”

 

Jack glances up at you. Eridan doesn’t react.

 

Shoald you eely say this aloud? Eh. Why the fuck knot.

 

“Someone those fucker wrigglers hate as much as us,” you say. “If we be livin’ like we have, then I think he probably followed us.”

 

“Where’s he up and at?” asks Gamzee. 

 

“I’m thinkin’ he’s already here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *AIRHOOOORNS* CUZ GUESS WHICH CHALLENGER IS BOUT TO COME TO PLAAAAY
> 
> I know I haven't been updating this a ton, but I promise I would never abandon this work! I hope it's still interesting and all. Lemme know what y'all think, I love to hear feedback. 
> 
> Comments feed the writing demon inside me!
> 
> And thank you so much for reading, you all are the absolute best. 
> 
> Have a nice day! :)


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I completely respect anyone who liked the epilogues-- you are valid-- but they just were not my cup of tea at all. So in utter spite against what I have interpreted as an attempt to massacre all my faves' characterizations, I speed wrote/read/edited this chapter, because this story has become very dear to my heart and I think that every baddie deserves a deeper story. 
> 
> After all, what's a villain if not a hero who's story was never told?

You, VRISKA SERKET, finish your story. ALL of your stories, ending right when you saw Equius and Nepeta outside. They were there for the rest of it. 

 

No one moves or makes a sound. Nepeta is giving Terezi a slightly scared, slightly amazed look, while Terezi has her face tilted toward her feet, as if in thought. Sollux has his usual resting bitch face, but there’s a sliver of discomfort in his stance. Aradia’s smile is frozen on her face. Feferi looks horrified. More horrified than Karkat does. 

 

Equius looks apologetically at the ruined cabinet. 

 

You swallow. You’re so tired of talking. But you speak anyway. “You’re all happy now? We’re good on that front?”

 

You think someone coughs, but you can’t pinpoint who, because Terezi is walking towards you and you can’t help but feel a stab of fear through the phantom wound in your chest. She walks over and stands in front of you. 

 

You feel like this is your trial and she is about to give you your final verdict. 

 

“Vriska,” she says, her voice a low tone and you can’t place her feelings through it, “are you telling the truth?”

 

You blink at her. “I mean,” you slowly say, “yeah. I wouldn’t lie about this shit, would I?”

 

“Yeth,” Sollux says, but even his voice is missing the edge it usually has. 

 

You roll your working eye. “Okaaaaaaaay, I get it, you all don’t trust me. But what I’m saying is true.” You pause and then wring your hands. “Why else would I be with Gamzee and Eridan of all people in the middle of a damn city?”

 

They all mull that over for a moment while you study your hands and wonder where the others are. If they are thinking about you. If they think you’re dead. You wonder how they would react if they saw your corpse, if they knew you were dead. You think they would care, after what you all had been through. You know Eridan would cry-- he cried a lot-- and you think there was a high chance Gamzee might too. You can practically envision Jack’s face at the very news. That stupid crestfallen face when he learned about Eridan’s human past from you, when he showed he cared in those fleeting moments. That face. That’s the one he would have if(when) you died. And Condy? You know she’s the type of woman to just move on, but you can’t help but hope she would turn away, as if your passing actually held some weight to it. You would like to think she would. 

 

You are broken from your reverie by Terezi saying, “You still drawl.”

 

You look back up at her. “What?”

 

“Your drawl,” she comments, as if in a trance, “you still draw all your vowels out. I can practically  _ see  _ the eight a’s when you say ‘okay’.”

 

And it hits you then. The warmth in her voice, like bubbles rising to the surface, ready to burst open into the air. And suddenly you are six sweeps and a troll again, standing on the dock of your ship with your FLARPing buddy in tow, laughing as you set off on another adventure that’s sure to end in some troll’s execution, and dinner for your mom. And the wind is in your hair and Terezi is right beside you and the world is at your feet and nothing matters. 

 

She wraps her arms around you. 

 

Around then is when you finally, officially, completely break. 

 

The tears come and they don’t stop. You return the hug with a sob, touching your forehead to her shoulder and just… letting it go. The past few hours had been stressful and anxiety-inducing and downright terrifying, and goddammit it just felt so good to be held like you were loved. She rocks you back and forth like you’re a wriggler and you can’t find it in yourself to give her snark about it. You’re just so tired. 

 

Terezi pats your back. You’re so  _ grateful _ .

 

“Tho,” Sollux butts right on into the moment, you know, like the dumb asshole he is, “we’re on her thide?”

 

“No,” Terezi answers, not letting go of you, “I have just given the decided punishment of forgiveness, is all. Your own verdict is your own. But this is what I’m choosing. She’s Vriska. She’s my friend. And I trust her.” She drops her voice into a whisper and adds, “Assuming you think the same of me.”

 

You quickly nod, more tears falling from your deformed face onto her jacket. You don’t have enough energy to give her a verbal answer. But you would think the same of her.. Maybe a past you wouldn’t have. But this you definitely would. You know now, you definitely would. You’d be on her side to hell and back. 

 

She’s  _ forgiven you.  _

 

You feel uncharacteristically giddy. 

 

“Ok, ok, fucking saps,” Karkat snaps at you (“Did he jutht call you thapth? Hypocrite,” is Sollux’s commentary), “yay, Terezi forgave, we forgive, yippee, can you guys not have a feelings jam in the middle of a damn crowd? Get a fucking pile.” His face is as bright as a tomato, but he looks a little relieved.

 

Terezi takes you by the shoulders and brings you back a bit. She smiles at you. Through the dying remains of your crying, you smile back. “Y-Y’know,” you stutter, “th-this is gonna be hard, with only one r-real working eye between the t-two of us.”

 

She laughs her harsh laugh, and you are so glad it’s back. “You were always up for a challenge,” she retorts. “Oh, of course,” you respond, “just wanted to know if you were up to snuff with that.”

 

“Duh! You think I’ve lost my skills with finding my way around? Want me to prove it?”

 

“Don’t lick my face.”

 

“No fun.”

 

“A _ hem,” _ Karkat interrupts, “c’mon, seriously. You’re in public.”

 

“Nevermind,” Terezi sighs, and offers her hand to you to help you stand. “He’s the one that is no fun.”

 

While Karkat screeches in protest, you shoot your best friend a grateful grin and take her hand. She sets up back onto you feet. Your feet, though, don’t seem that ready to work just yet, so you half fall onto her shoulder. She supports you as you find your footing. You lean against her and give her shoulder a small, thankful squeeze. 

 

“Thank you,” you say to her. You don’t specify what you’re thanking her for. You’re thanking her for the damn chance. 

 

She looks surprised before she quirks and eyebrow and gives a soft laugh, “That’s what friends are for, dummy.”

 

You swallow back more tears. You have not been this happy since you and Jack took Gamzee to the park one time and they both fell into a puddle and you laughed so hard you cried.

 

…

 

_ Shit, Gamzee and Jack.  _

 

“So now what is our game plan?” Aradia says, looking directly at you and probably reading your thoughts, “Terezi trusts you. If she trusts you, Karkat will trust you, thus Sollux will trust you and then Feferi… sorry cycle! So now what?”

 

You swallow. “I mean… what do we mean by… by trust?”

 

“I’ll follow your lead,” Terezi tells the room, but is addressing you, “if your story is true, we haven’t been too understanding.”

 

You bite back a “Yeah, no, you haven’t,” because you’ve grown and you aren’t going to start throwing wriggler insults around right now. 

 

“We… we were scared,” Terezi admits, “because of all you had done, and… and I suppose we all wanted to be proactive about preventing another meteor murder spree slash complete massacre of everything we hold dear. So we came after you.” she nods in Karkat’s general direction, as if he had also been planning on what to say, and her head swivels to you, as you hang onto her shoulder. “We’re sorry.”

 

You give a small shrug. “I mean, you were justified.”

 

Aradia gives an energetic nod and bounces on her toes. “We were! But in all honesty, so were you. Ah, the discourse,” she hums, and smiles wide. “But I’m talking time, now. What will we do in the next few minutes, seconds?”

 

“Well, that’s what I’m saying,” Terezi says, “Vriska… what is next?”

 

You look around the room. Every face is one that is following Terezi this time around. And she is putting her trust in you. 

 

In  _ you _ . 

 

You inhale. 

 

Exhale. 

 

“I don’t care about what you all do now,” you say, “but I know that I need to go find my family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAYYY
> 
> Thank you all for reading guys! I appreciate every last one of you. 
> 
> I believe I have a hankering to write my own sort of epilogue? Again, no offense to anyone who wrote the epilogues or who liked them. Just a difference in taste. (see what i did there? taste? meat? candy? i'll be here all week.)
> 
> Anyways, feel free to leave a critique/comment, as those fuel the writing demon inside me. 
> 
> Have a great day, y'all! :)


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